Economics in One Lesson: 50th Anniversary Edition - Softcover

Henry Hazlitt

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0930073193 ISBN 13: 9780930073190

Publisher: Laissez Faire Books, 2008

Synopsis

A new trade paperback edition of the 50th anniversary edition of this classic work. This edition is NOT the same as other editions and was updated and has new material.

About this title

About the Author:

If you want to know where American supporters of free markets learned economics, take a look at Economics in One Lesson by Henry Hazlitt. A brilliant and pithy work first published in 1946, at a time of rampant statism at home and abroad, it taught millions the bad consequences of putting government in charge of economic life. College students all across America and the world still use it and learn from it. It may be the most popular economics text ever written.

Mr. Hazlitt--journalist, literary critic, economist, philosopher--was one of the most brilliant public intellectuals of our century. He was born on November 28, 1894, and died on July 8, 1993, at the age of 98. In his final years, he often expressed surprise that Economics in One Lesson had become his most enduring contribution. He wrote it to expose the popular fallacies of its day. He did not know that those fallacies would be government policy for the duration of the century.

Hazlitt also wanted to be known for his other contributions, which include a novel, a trialogue on literary criticism, two large treaties on economics and moral philosophy, several edited volumes, some sixteen other books, and countless chapters in books, articles, commentaries, reviews. He once estimated that he had written 10 million words and that his collected works would run to 150 volumes.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.:

The following is the Foreword by Steve Forbes.

We have been inundated lately with a barrage of 50th anniversaries of important events--the dropping of the atomic bombs, Iwo Jima, VE and VJ days, Bretton Woods. And with this edition of Henry Hazlitt's best-known work we commemorate another. Five decades have passed since the publication of a book on economics so powerful in its clarity and simplicity that we can declare, without question, it has shaped our world.

With Economics in One Lesson, Henry Hazlitt provided a loaded arsenal for those who would do combat with the cloudy and mistaken economic wisdom of the day. In that respect, he is something of a refuter. He addressed every mayor economic fallacy, all prominently and widely held, and refuted them. He showed why protective tariffs are not protective, why minimum wage laws hurt those they are intended to benefit, and why government attempts to stabilize and fix prices throw them out of whack. And in doing so he advanced the notion that markets freed from government intervention can best serve and improve society.

In a period when the economics undergirding the New Deal were ascendant, Hazlitt emerged as one of the most successful proponents of free markets, and one of the most forceful opponents of the Keynesian nostrums dictating U.S. economic policy. From his perch as an editorial writer for The New York Times he gave the Roosevelt Administration fits. At The Nation, where he signed on as literary editor but wrote extensively on economics, he gave his editors similar fits. And as a regular columnist for Newsweek from 1946 to 1966 he helped educate millions about the rudiments of economics and the failures of widespread government intervention. As a sign of the times, today we would be rightly suspicious of any economics writer with that sort of resume.

Ludwig von Mises called him "our leader." Friedrich Hayek lauded him similarly. H. L. Mencken, not known for lavishing praise on many, revered Hazlitt as "one of the few economists in human history who could really write." But Henry Hazlitt was no economist. At least, not officially. No Ph.D.--or bachelor's degree, for that matter--adored his walls. Hazlitt's insatiable curiosity about the way the world works led him, self-taught, to an understanding of basic economics astonishing in its breadth and scope.

About this edition

• Publisher: Laissez Faire Books
• Publication date: 2008
• ISBN 10: 0930073193
• ISBN 13: 9780930073190
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 205