Quote

New taxes are so unpopular that most 'social' handout schemes are originally enacted without enough increased taxation to pay for them. The result is chronic government deficits, paid for by the issuance of additional paper money.

Henry Hazlitt

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Henry Hazlitt
Age: 98 †
Born: 1894
Born: November 28
Died: 1993
Died: July 8
Economist
Journalist
Philosopher
Philadelphia
Pennsylvania
Henry Stuart Hazlitt
Results
Schemes
Handouts
Social
Deficit
Enacted
Money
Increased
Deficits
Government
Result
Unpopular
Without
Taxes
Chronic
Enough
Paid
Additional
Paper
Originally
Pay
Taxation
Handout

More quotes by Henry Hazlitt

Image
Today is already the tomorrow which the bad economist yesterday urged us to ignore.
Henry Hazlitt
Image
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
Image
The way to get a maximum rate of 'economic growth' assuming this to be our aim - is to give maximum encouragement to production, employment, saving, and investment. And the way to do this is to maintain a free market and a sound currency.
Henry Hazlitt
Image
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
Image
The larger the percentage of the national income taken by taxes the greater the deterrent to private production and employment. When the total tax burden grows beyond a bearable size, the problem of devising taxes that will not discourage and disrupt production becomes insoluble.
Henry Hazlitt
Image
A man who is good from docility, and not from stern self-control, has no character.
Henry Hazlitt
Image
Once the premise is accepted that poverty is never the fault of the poor but the fault of 'society,' or of 'the capitalist system, then there is no definable limit to be set on relief, and the politicians who want to be elected or reelected will compete with each other in proposing new 'welfare' programs to fill some hitherto 'unmet need.'
Henry Hazlitt
Image
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
Image
The only way we could remember would be by constant re-reading, for knowledge unused tends to drop out of mind. Knowledge used does not need to be remembered practice forms habits and habits make memory unnecessary. The rule is nothing the application is everything.
Henry Hazlitt
Image
Need is not demand. Effective economic demand requires not merely need but corresponding purchasing power.
Henry Hazlitt
Image
Economics is haunted by more fallacies than any other study known to man
Henry Hazlitt
Image
In a free enterprise system, with an honest and stable money, there is dominantly a close link between effort and productivity, on the one hand, and economic reward on the other. Inflation severs this link. Reward comes to depend less and less on effort and production, and more and more on successful gambling and luck.
Henry Hazlitt
Image
Inflation is a form of tax, a tax that we all collectively must pay.
Henry Hazlitt
Image
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
Image
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
Image
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
Image
Bureaucrats denounce private enterprise for the consequences of their own reckless policies and demand still more governmental controls.
Henry Hazlitt
Image
If precious metals had been abundant, they would not have been precious.
Henry Hazlitt
Image
To try to cure unemployment by inflation rather than by adjustment of specific wage-rates is like trying to adjust the piano to the stool rather than the stool to the piano.
Henry Hazlitt
Image
Prolonged inflation never 'stimulates' the economy. On the contrary, it unbalances, disrupts, and misdirects production and employment.
Henry Hazlitt