[Newsweek column from June 25, 1951, and reprinted in Business Tides: The Newsweek Era of Henry Hazlitt.] Regardless of what Congress actually does before June 30, it is instructive to consider what a sensible anti-inflationary legislative program would be like if we could get it. 1—What is primarily needed is not more controls by the government
A correspondent who describes himself as “a 26-year old college graduate who strongly supports a system of free enterprise,” recently wrote me to say that he is “continuously confronted with questions that are most difficult to answer.” He appended a list of 10 of them, and asked for my comments. I offer my answer here. To save space, I have not
[Published January 27, 1964 in Newsweek. Excerpted from Business Tides: The Newsweek Era of Henry Hazlitt ] President Johnson has declared an “all-out war on human poverty.” It is a laudable aim. It has, in fact, been the aim of rulers, statesmen, economists, reformers, religious leaders — of every man of goodwill — from time immemorial. It is
From time to time over the last thirty years, after I have talked or written about some new restriction on human liberty in the economic field, some new attack on private enterprise, I have been asked in person or received a letter asking, “What can I do” — to fight the inflationist or socialist trend? Other writers or lecturers, I find, are often
In the United States, Federal programs to relieve poverty and unemployment first went into effect on a large scale in the Great Depression. The argument was that they were needed only during the emergency. Since then the nation has enjoyed a return of prosperity, an enormous growth in national income, a fall of unemployment to record low levels,
More than thirty years ago—in 1928, to be precise— H. G. Wells published a minor propagandistic novel called “The Open Conspiracy.” Though I reviewed it at the time, I’ve forgotten now exactly what that open conspiracy was. But the description seems to fit with peculiar aptness something that is happening in the United States today. Our
In the last two years left-wingers have been fond of referring to private enterprise as a “boom-bust” economy; OPA officials have contended that only price fixing can prevent a repetition of the 1920–21 boom and collapse, and British statesmen have insisted that their new “democratic socialism” will work beautifully if only mercurial America
Economics, as we have now seen again and again, is a science of recognizing secondary consequences. It is also a science of seeing general consequences. It is the science of tracing the effects of some proposed or existing policy not only on some special interest in the short run, but on the general interest in the long run . This is the lesson
From the beginning of history sincere reformers as well as demagogues have sought to abolish or at least to alleviate poverty through state action. In most cases their proposed remedies have only served to make the problem worse. The most frequent and popular of these proposed remedies has been the simple one of seizing from the rich to give to
In his classic little history of fiat money inflation in the French Revolution, Andrew D. White points out that the more evident the evil consequences of inflation became, the more rabid became the demands for still more inflation to cure them. Today, as inflation increases, apologists emerge to suggest that, after all, inflation may be a very
What is the Mises Institute?
The Mises Institute is a non-profit organization that exists to promote teaching and research in the Austrian School of economics, individual freedom, honest history, and international peace, in the tradition of Ludwig von Mises and Murray N. Rothbard.
Non-political, non-partisan, and non-PC, we advocate a radical shift in the intellectual climate, away from statism and toward a private property order. We believe that our foundational ideas are of permanent value, and oppose all efforts at compromise, sellout, and amalgamation of these ideas with fashionable political, cultural, and social doctrines inimical to their spirit.