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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.

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
Running
Increase
Masses
Real
Benefits
Tendency
Even
Mass
Tendencies
Long
Line
Benefit
Along
Nearly
Lines
Income
Rich
Capitalism
Proportionately
Less
Historical
Incomes

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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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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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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.
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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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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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In a thousand fields the welfarists, statists, socialists, and interventionists are daily driving for more restrictions on individual liberty.
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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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Need is not demand. Effective economic demand requires not merely need but corresponding purchasing power.
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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.
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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.
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The only real cure for poverty is production.
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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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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.
Henry Hazlitt
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The mounting burden of taxation not only undermines individual incentives to increased work and earnings, but in a score of ways discourages capital accumulation and distorts, unbalances, and shrinks production.
Henry Hazlitt
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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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..either immediately or ultimately every dollar of government spending must be raised through a dollar of taxation. Once we look at the matter. In this way, the supposed miracles of government spending will appear in another light.
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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.
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A man who is good from docility, and not from stern self-control, has no character.
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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
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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.
Henry Hazlitt