Henry Hazlitt had left the New York Times in an ideological disagreement over post-war economic policy. Once he left, he was free to speak his mind on the important issues of the day, among which the Marshall Plan. This is his blockbuster argument against the idea of putting post-war Europe on the US dole. He made the case that aid would forestall
A lone voice of economic sanity in the United States after World War II was Henry Hazlitt, who had moved in 1946 from the New York Times editorial page to Newsweek magazine, where he wrote until the late 1960s. He wrote a column every week on the most important economic topic being discussed in politics and the media. Each column was about 800
Throughout history, until about the middle of the 18th century, mass poverty was nearly everywhere the normal condition of man. Then capital accumulation and a series of major inventions ushered in the Industrial Revolution. In spite of occasional setbacks, economic progress became accelerative. Today, in the United States, in Canada, in nearly
[Published January 27, 1964 in Newsweek. Excerpted from Business Tides: The Newsweek Era of Henry Hazlitt ] President Johnson has declared an “all-out war on human poverty.” It is a laudable aim. It has, in fact, been the aim of rulers, statesmen, economists, reformers, religious leaders — of every man of goodwill — from time immemorial. It is
In the last two years left-wingers have been fond of referring to private enterprise as a “boom-bust” economy; OPA officials have contended that only price fixing can prevent a repetition of the 1920–21 boom and collapse, and British statesmen have insisted that their new “democratic socialism” will work beautifully if only mercurial America
From the beginning of history sincere reformers as well as demagogues have sought to abolish or at least to alleviate poverty through state action. In most cases their proposed remedies have only served to make the problem worse. The most frequent and popular of these proposed remedies has been the simple one of seizing from the rich to give to
There are basically only two ways in which economic life can be organized. The first is by the voluntary choice of families and individuals and by voluntary cooperation. This arrangement has come to be known as the free market. The other is by the orders of a dictator. This is a command economy. In its more extreme form, when an organized state
Recognizing the calamitous erosion of incentives that would be brought about by a straight guaranteed-income plan, some reformers have advocated what they call a “negative income tax.” This proposal was put forward by the prominent economist, Professor Milton Friedman, of the University of Chicago, in his book Capitalism and Freedom , which
A lo largo de la historia, hasta mediados del siglo XVIII, la pobreza masiva era casi siempre la condición normal del hombre. Luego, la acumulación de capital y una serie de grandes inventos dieron paso a la Revolución Industrial. A pesar de los reveses ocasionales, el progreso económico se aceleró. Hoy, en Estados Unidos, en Canadá, en casi toda
Básicamente, sólo hay dos maneras de organizar la vida económica. El primero es la elección voluntaria de familias e individuos y la cooperación voluntaria. Este acuerdo ha llegado a conocerse como el libre mercado. La otra es por orden de un dictador. Esta es una economía de mando. En su forma más extrema, cuando un estado organizado expropia los
What is the Mises Institute?
The Mises Institute is a non-profit organization that exists to promote teaching and research in the Austrian School of economics, individual freedom, honest history, and international peace, in the tradition of Ludwig von Mises and Murray N. Rothbard.
Non-political, non-partisan, and non-PC, we advocate a radical shift in the intellectual climate, away from statism and toward a private property order. We believe that our foundational ideas are of permanent value, and oppose all efforts at compromise, sellout, and amalgamation of these ideas with fashionable political, cultural, and social doctrines inimical to their spirit.