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 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 given community men The consequences of inflation are malinvestment, waste, a wanton redistribution of wealth and income, the growth of speculation and gambling, immorality and corruption, disillusionment, social resentment, discontent, upheaval and riots, bankruptcy, increased government controls, and eventual collapse. Henry Hazlitt gambling growth government Mere inflation-that is, the mere issuance of more money, with the consequence of higher wages and prices-may look like the creation of more demand. But in terms of the actual production and exchange of real things it is not. Henry Hazlitt wages real looks 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 rubbish champion firsts The essential function of the State is to maintain peace, justice, law, and order, and to protect the individual citizen against aggression, violence, theft, and fraud. Henry Hazlitt law justice order Once the idea is accepted that money is something whose supply is determined simply by the printing press, it becomes impossible for the politicians in power to resist the constant demands for further inflation. Henry Hazlitt demand determined ideas 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 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 saving giving mean The vital consideration of incentives is almost systematically overlooked in the proposals of agitators for more and bigger government welfare schemes. We should all be concerned about the plight of the poor and unfortunate. But the hard two-part question that any plan for relieving poverty must answer is: How can we mitigate the penalties of failure and misfortune without undermining the incentives to effort and success. Henry Hazlitt government-welfare effort two 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 would-be dream giving 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 rich growing 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 taken real running A Day never passes without some ardent reformer or group of reformers suggesting some new government intervention, some new statist scheme to fill some alleged 'need' or relieve some alleged distress. Henry Hazlitt groups government needs The tendency of welfare spending in the United States has been to increase at an exponential rate. Henry Hazlitt welfare increase united-states The sad fact is that today most of the heads of big businesses in America have become so confused or intimidated that, so far from carrying the free market to argument to the enemy, they fail to defend themselves adequately even when attacked. Henry Hazlitt confused america enemy The surest way for a poor nation to stay poor is to harass, hobble, and straitjacket private enterprise or to discourage or destroy it by subsidized government competition, oppressive taxation, or outright expropriation. Henry Hazlitt poor-nations competition government Need is not demand. Effective economic demand requires not merely need but corresponding purchasing power. Henry Hazlitt economic demand needs The most obvious and yet the oldest and most stubborn error on which the appeal of inflation rests is that of confusing ‘money’ with ‘wealth’…Real wealth, of course, consists in what is produced and consumed: the food we eat, the clothes we wear, the houses we live in. It is railways and roads and motor cars; ships and planes and factories; schools and churches and theaters; pianos, paintings and books. Yet so powerful is the verbal ambiguity that confuses money with wealth, that even those who at times recognize the confusion will slide back into it in the course of their reasoning. Henry Hazlitt powerful real book The quickest and surest way to production, prosperity, and economic growth is through private enterprise. The best way for governments to encourage private enterprise is to establish justice, to enforce contracts, to insure domestic peace and tranquility, to protect private property, and to secure the blessings of liberty including economic liberty - which means to stop putting obstacles in the way of private enterprise. Henry Hazlitt government blessing mean The long-run historical tendency of capitalism has not only been to increase real incomes more or less proportionately nearly all along the line, but to benefit the masses even more than the rich. Henry Hazlitt real running long
