A vital function of the free market is to penalize inefficiency and misjudgment and to reward efficiency and good judgment. By distorting economic calculations and creating illusory profits, inflation will destroy this function. Henry Hazlitt More Quotes by Henry Hazlitt More Quotes From Henry Hazlitt The only real cure for poverty is production. Henry Hazlitt cures poverty real In a thousand fields the welfarists, statists, socialists, and interventionists are daily driving for more restrictions on individual liberty. Henry Hazlitt driving liberty fields 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 errors men philosophy A man who is good from docility, and not from stern self-control, has no character. Henry Hazlitt self character men If there is to be no loss whatever of dignity or self-respect in getting and staying on relief, then there can be no gain in dignity or self-respect in makings some sacrifices to keep off. Henry Hazlitt sacrifice self loss There can be little doubt that many egalitarians are motivated at least partly by envy. Henry Hazlitt envy doubt littles All loans, in the eyes of honest borrowers, must eventually be repaid. All credit is debt. Proposals for an increased volume of credit, therefore, are merely another name for proposals for an increased burden of debt. They would seem considerably less inviting if they were habitually referred to by the second name instead of by the first. Henry Hazlitt credit eye names Arbitrary government power is being multiplied daily by the now practically unchallenged assumption that wherever there is any problem of any kind to be solved, government is the agency to step in and solve it. Henry Hazlitt arbitrary agency government The superior freedom of the capitalist system, its superior justice, and its superior productivity are not three superiorities, but one. The justice follows from the freedom and the productivity follows from the freedom and the justice. Henry Hazlitt capitalist three justice A hundred welfare programs, spending more and more billions, lead to chronic budget deficits, which lead to increased paper-money issues, which lead to higher prices. Henry Hazlitt welfare-programs issues paper Prolonged inflation never 'stimulates' the economy. On the contrary, it unbalances, disrupts, and misdirects production and employment. Henry Hazlitt inflation employment economy The crying need today is not for more laws, but for fewer. The world must be saved from its saviors. If the friends of liberty and law could have only one slogan it should be: Stop the remedies! Henry Hazlitt liberty law needs 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 allies battle sorrow Everything we get, outside of the free gifts of nature, must in some way be paid for. The world is full of so- called economists who in turn are full of schemes for getting something for nothing. They tell us that the government can spend and spend without taxing at all; that it can continue to pile up debt without ever paying it off, because "we owe it to ourselves." Henry Hazlitt free-gifts government philosophy Contrary to age-old prejudices, the wealth of the rich is not the cause of the poverty of the poor, but helps to alleviate that poverty. Henry Hazlitt poverty prejudice age Inflation is a form of tax, a tax that we all collectively must pay. Henry Hazlitt taxes form pay 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 evil law order The great merit of gold is precisely that it is scarce; that its quantity is limited by nature; that it is costly to discover, to mine, and to process; and that it cannot be created by political fiat or caprice. Henry Hazlitt merit political gold The way to maximize production is to maximize the incentives to production. And the way to do that, as the modern world has discovered, is through the system known as capitalism - the system of private property, free markets, and free enterprise. Henry Hazlitt incentives way world The solution to our problems is not more paternalism, laws, decrees, and controls, but the restoration of liberty and free enterprise, the restoration of incentives, to let loose the tremendous constructive energies of 300 million Americans. Henry Hazlitt incentives liberty law
