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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

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Henry Hazlitt
Age: 98 †
Born: 1894
Born: November 28
Died: 1993
Died: July 8
Economist
Journalist
Philosopher
Philadelphia
Pennsylvania
Henry Stuart Hazlitt
Daily
Unchallenged
Solve
Multiplied
Step
Solved
Steps
Practically
Power
Arbitrary
Problem
Agency
Government
Assumption
Kind
Wherever

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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.
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Diluting the money supply with paper is the moral equivalent of diluting the milk supply with water.
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Economics is haunted by more fallacies than any other study known to man. This is no accident. The inherent difficulties of the subject would be great enough in any case, but they are multiplied a thousandfold by a factor that is insignificant in, say, physics, mathematics or medicine - the special pleading of selfish interests.
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Economic progress and justice do not consist in superbly equalized destitution, but in the constant creation of more and more goods and services, of more and more wealth and income to be shared.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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The government has nothing to give to anybody that it doesn't first take from someone else.
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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.'
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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.
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The art of economics consists in looking not merely at the immediate but at the longer effects of any act or policy it consists in tracing the consequences of that policy not merely for one group but for all groups.
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Multiculturalism means your kid has to learn some wretched tribal dirge for the school holiday concert instead of getting to sing 'Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer.'
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A certain amount of taxes is of course indispensable to carry on essential government functions. Reasonable taxes for this purpose need not hurt production much.
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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.
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If a government resorts to inflation, that is, creates money in order to cover its budget deficits or expands credit in order to stimulate business, then no power on earth, no gimmick, device, trick or even indexation can prevent its economic consequences.
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Economics is haunted by more fallacies than any other study known to man
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In a thousand fields the welfarists, statists, socialists, and interventionists are daily driving for more restrictions on individual liberty.
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The envious are more likely to be mollified by seeing others deprived of some advantage than by gaining it for themselves. It is not what they lack that chiefly troubles them, but what others have.
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Need is not demand. Effective economic demand requires not merely need but corresponding purchasing power.
Henry Hazlitt