Henry Hazlitt Quotes - Page 4

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• Precisely because the State has the monopoly of coercion it can be allowed the monopoly only of coercion. Only if the modern State can be held within a strictly limited agency of duties and powers can it be prevented from regimenting, conquering, and ultimately devouring the society which gave it birth.

  Henry Hazlitt

  Agency, Coercion, Birth

  20 Copy quote

• Some champions of ever-greater governmental power and spending invent the theory that the taxpayers, left to themselves, spend the money they have earned very foolishly, on all sorts of trivialities and rubbish, and that only the bureaucrats, by first seizing it from them, will know how to spend it wisely.

  Henry Hazlitt

  Champion, Rubbish, Firsts

  Henry Hazlitt (1971). “Man Vs. the Welfare State”, p.210, Ludwig von Mises Institute

  9 Copy quote

• Modern capitalism benefited the masses in a double way - both by greatly increasing the wages of the masses of workers and greatly reducing the real prices they had to pay for what was produced.

  Henry Hazlitt

  Real, Wages, Pay

  Henry Hazlitt, Hans F. Sennholz (1993). “The Wisdom of Henry Hazlitt”, Foundation for Economic Education

  6 Copy quote

• The proposal is frequently made that the government ought to assume the risks that are "too great for private industry." This means that bureaucrats should be permitted to take risks with the tax payer's money that no one is willing to take with his own.

  Henry Hazlitt

  Mean, Government, Risk

  Henry Hazlitt (2010). “Economics in One Lesson: The Shortest and Surest Way to Understand Basic Economics”, p.41, Crown Business

  7 Copy quote

• You cannot make a man worth a given amount by making it illegal for anyone to offer him anything less. You merely deprive him of the right to earn the amount that his abilities and situation would permit him to earn, while you deprive the community even of the moderate services that he is capable of rendering. In brief, for a low wage you substitute unemployment. You do harm all around, with no comparable compensation.

  Henry Hazlitt

  Men, Community, Given

  9 Copy quote

• The capitalist system has lifted mankind out of mass poverty. It is this system that in the last century, in the last generation, even in the last decade, has acceleratively been changing the face of the world, and has provided the masses of mankind with amenities that even kings did not possess or imagine a few generations ago.

  Henry Hazlitt

  Kings, Lasts, Poverty

  Henry Hazlitt (1996). “The Conquest of Poverty”

  11 Copy quote

• The monetary managers are fond of telling us that they have substituted 'responsible money management' for the gold standard. But there is no historic record of responsible paper money management ... The record taken, as a whole is one of hyperinflation, devaluation and monetary chaos.

  Henry Hazlitt

  Taken, Liberty, Gold

  14 Copy quote

• It is often sadly remarked that the bad economists present their errors to the public better than the good economists present their truths. It is often complained that demagogues can be more plausible in putting forward economic nonsense from the platform than the honest men who try to show what is wrong with it.

  Henry Hazlitt

  Philosophy, Men, Errors

  Henry Hazlitt (2010). “Economics in One Lesson: The Shortest and Surest Way to Understand Basic Economics”, p.14, Crown Business

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• Socialists will often talk as if some form of superbly equalized destitution were preferable to "maldistributed" plenty. A national income that is rapidly growing in absolute terms for practically everyone will be deplored because it is making the rich richer.

  Henry Hazlitt

  Income, Growing, Rich

  Henry Hazlitt (1996). “The Conquest of Poverty”

  7 Copy quote

• There are men regarded today as brilliant economists, who deprecate saving and recommend squandering on a national scale as the way of economic salvation; and when anyone points to what the consequences of these policies will be in the long run, they reply flippantly, as might the prodigal son of a warning father: 'In the long run we are all dead.' And such shallow wisecracks pass as devastating epigrams and the ripest wisdom.

  Henry Hazlitt

  Running, Father, Son

  Henry Hazlitt (2010). “Economics in One Lesson: The Shortest and Surest Way to Understand Basic Economics”, p.12, Crown Business

  8 Copy quote

• No matter whether it is their intention or not, almost anything that the rich can legally do tends to help the poor. The spending of the rich gives employment to the poor. But the saving of the rich, and their investment of these savings in the means of production, gives just as much employment, and in addition makes that employment constantly more productive and more highly paid, while it also constantly increases and cheapens the production of necessities and amenities for the masses.

  Henry Hazlitt

  Mean, Giving, Saving

  Henry Hazlitt, Hans F. Sennholz (1993). “The Wisdom of Henry Hazlitt”, Foundation for Economic Education

  8 Copy quote

• From a strictly economic point of view, buying gold in a major inflation and holding it probably presents the least risk of capital loss of any investment or speculation.

  Henry Hazlitt

  Loss, Views, Risk

  9 Copy quote

• Need is not demand. Effective economic demand requires not merely need but corresponding purchasing power.

  Henry Hazlitt

  Needs, Demand, Economic

  Henry Hazlitt (2010). “Economics in One Lesson: The Shortest and Surest Way to Understand Basic Economics”, p.20, Crown Business

  8 Copy quote

• Capitalism will continue to eliminate mass poverty in more and more places and to an increasingly marked extent if it is merely permitted to do so.

  Henry Hazlitt

  Poverty, Mass, Capitalism

  Henry Hazlitt (1996). “The Conquest of Poverty”

  8 Copy quote

• Would-be income guarantors ignore or despise the capitalistic system that makes their dreams dreamable and gives their redistribute-the-income proposals whatever plausibility they have.

  Henry Hazlitt

  Dream, Giving, Would Be

  Henry Hazlitt (1983). “Man vs. the welfare state”, Univ Pr of Amer

  7 Copy quote

• We are so accustomed to the miracle of private enterprise that we habitually take it for granted. But how does private industry solve the incredibly complex problem of turning out tens of thousands of different goods and services in the proportions in which they are wanted by the public? ... It solves these problems through the institutions of private property, competition, the free market, and the existence of money - through the interrelations of supply and demand, costs and prices, profits and losses.

  Henry Hazlitt

  Loss, Miracle, Competition

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• Government relief tends constantly to get out of hand. And even when it is kept within reasonable bounds it tends to reduce the incentives to work and to save both of those who receive it and of those who are forced to pay it. It may be said, in fact, that practically every measure that governments take with the ostensible object of 'helping the poor' has the long-run effect of doing the opposite.

  Henry Hazlitt

  Running, Government, Hands

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• The State, of course, is absolutely indispensable to the preservation of law and order, and the promotion of peace and social cooperation. What is unnecessary and evil, what abridges the liberty and threatens the true welfare of the individual, is the State that has usurped excessive powers and grown beyond its legitimate function - the super-State, the socialist State, the redistributive State, in brief, the ironically misnamed 'Welfare State.'

  Henry Hazlitt

  Order, Law, Evil

  Henry Hazlitt (1971). “Man Vs. the Welfare State”, p.195, Ludwig von Mises Institute

  9 Copy quote

• The system of capitalism, of the market economy, is a system of freedom, of justice, of productivity. But these three virtues cannot be separated. Each flows out of the other.

  Henry Hazlitt

  Justice, Three, Flow

  9 Copy quote

• The first (lesson) which we meet again and again in history, is that once the dole or similar relief programs are introduced, they seem almost inevitably - unless surrounded by the most rigid restrictions - to get out of hand. The second lesson is that once this happens the poor become more numerous and worse off than they were before, not only because they have lost self-reliance, but because the sources of wealth and production on which they depend for either doles or jobs are diminished or destroyed.

  Henry Hazlitt

  Jobs, Self, Hands

  10 Copy quote

• Yet it ought to be clear that a minimum wage law is, at best, a limited weapon for combatting the evil of low wages, and that the possible good to be achieved by such a law can exceed the possible harm only in proportion as its aims are mode.

  Henry Hazlitt

  Law, Numbers, Evil

  "Economics in One Lesson: The Shortest and Surest Way to Understand Basic Economics".

  7 Copy quote

• There can be little doubt that many egalitarians are motivated at least partly by envy.

  Henry Hazlitt

  Envy, Doubt, Littles

  Henry Hazlitt, Hans F. Sennholz (1993). “The Wisdom of Henry Hazlitt”, Foundation for Economic Education

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• The question is not whether we wish to see everybody as well off as possible. Among men of good will such an aim can be taken for granted. The real question concerns the proper means of achieving it. And in trying to answer this we must never lose sight of a few elementary truisms. We cannot distribute more wealth than is created. We cannot in the long run pay labor as a whole more than it produces.

  Henry Hazlitt

  Running, Real, Taken

  Henry Hazlitt (2010). “Economics in One Lesson: The Shortest and Surest Way to Understand Basic Economics”, p.146, Crown Business

  7 Copy quote

• Relief, or redistribution of income, voluntary or coerced, is never the true solution of poverty, but at best a makeshift, which may mask the disease and mitigate the pain, but provides no basic cure.

  Henry Hazlitt

  Pain, Relief, Income

  6 Copy quote

• Libertarians are learning to their sorrow that big businessmen cannot necessarily be relied upon to be their allies in the battle against extension of governmental encroachments.

  Henry Hazlitt

  Sorrow, Battle, Allies

  Henry Hazlitt (1971). “Man Vs. the Welfare State”, p.207, Ludwig von Mises Institute

  6 Copy quote

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