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Bureaucrats denounce private enterprise for the consequences of their own reckless policies and demand still more governmental controls.

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
Denounce
Consequence
Private
Governmental
Demand
Bureaucrats
Policy
Controls
Stills
Reckless
Still
Policies
Enterprise
Consequences

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The more things a government undertakes to do, the fewer things it can do completely. When the government tries to do everything it must do everything badly.
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Inflation is a form of tax, a tax that we all collectively must pay.
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Today is already the tomorrow which the bad economist yesterday urged us to ignore.
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One of the worst features of all the plans for sharing wealth and equalizing or guaranteeing incomes is that they lose sight of the conditions and institution s that are necessary to create wealth and income in the first place.
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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.
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There is no more certain way to deter employment than to harass and penalize employers.
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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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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.
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It is possible to increase paper-money income to any amount by debasing the currency. But real income can only be increased by working harder or more efficiently, saving more, investing more, and producing more.
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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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The only way government bureaucrats know of keeping prosperity going is to inflate some more - to increase the deficit or to pump more money into the system.
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The tendency of welfare spending in the United States has been to increase at an exponential rate.
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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
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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.
Henry Hazlitt
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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
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In a thousand fields the welfarists, statists, socialists, and interventionists are daily driving for more restrictions on individual liberty.
Henry Hazlitt
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The more 'adequate' we make relief, the more people we are going to find willing to get on it and stay on it indefinitely. The more we try to make sure that everybody really in need of relief gets it, the more certain we can be that we are also giving it to people who neither need nor deserve it.
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Prolonged inflation never 'stimulates' the economy. On the contrary, it unbalances, disrupts, and misdirects production and employment.
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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
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Relief, or redistribution of income, voluntary or coerced, is never the true solution of poverty, but at best a makeshift, which may mask the disease and mitigate the pain, but provides no basic cure.
Henry Hazlitt