QUOTES OF THE DAY 4-11-13

“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, Economics in One Lesson: The Shortest and Surest Way to Understand Basic Economics

“Practically all government attempts to redistribute wealth and income tend to smother productive incentives and lead toward general impoverishment. It is the proper sphere of government to create and enforce a framework of law that prohibits force and fraud. But it must refrain from specific economic interventions. Government’s main economic function is to encourage and preserve a free market.
― Henry Hazlitt, Economics in One Lesson: The Shortest and Surest Way to Understand Basic Economics

“The ideas which now pass for brilliant innovations and advances are in fact mere revivals of ancient errors, and a further proof of the dictum that those who are ignorant of the past are condemned to repeat it.”
― Henry Hazlitt, Economics in One Lesson: The Shortest and Surest Way to Understand Basic Economics

“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.”
― Henry Hazlitt

“Everything we get, outside of the free gifts of nature, must in some way be paid for. The world is full of so- called economists who in turn are full of schemes for getting something for nothing. They tell us that the government can spend and spend without taxing at all; that it can continue to pile up debt without ever paying it off, because “we owe it to ourselves.”
― Henry Hazlitt, Economics in One Lesson: The Shortest and Surest Way to Understand Basic Economics

“Necessary policemen, firemen, street cleaners, health officers, judges, legislators and executives perform productive services as important as those of anyone in private industry. They make it possible for private industry to function in an atmosphere of law, order, freedom and peace. But their justification consists in the utility of their services. It does not consist in the “purchasing power” they possess by virtue of being on the public payroll.”
― Henry Hazlitt, Economics in One Lesson: The Shortest and Surest Way to Understand Basic Economics

“Mere inflation-that is, the mere issuance of more money, with the consequence of higher wages and prices-may look like the creation of more demand. But in terms of the actual production and exchange of real things it is not.”
― Henry Hazlitt, Economics in One Lesson: The Shortest and Surest Way to Understand Basic Economics

“all loans, in the eyes of honest borrowers, must eventually he repaid. All credit is debt. Proposals for an increased volume of credit, therefore, are merely another name for proposals for an increased burden of debt. They would seem considerably less inviting if they were habitually referred to by the second name instead of by the first.”
― Henry Hazlitt, Economics in One Lesson: The Shortest and Surest Way to Understand Basic Economics