Hazlitt’s Economics in One Lesson

I have good news. The Mises Institute has made available Henry Hazlitt’s classic book, Economics in One Lesson, free of charge. You can download it here.

The book was published in 1946. This book, along with F. A. Hayek’s book, The Road to Serfdom (1944), served as the foundation of the revival of the libertarian movement in the postwar world. The Old Right had disappeared overnight on December 7, 1941. There was almost no trace of it at the end of World War II. This is why Hayek’s book and Hazlitt’s book were so important.

No introductory book on economics is better than Hazlitt’s. He was a marvelous journalist, and he was a skilled writer. He took two basic themes, and he built this book around them. The first theme is this: when the government spends money on one item, it has to take money away from people who would otherwise spend the money on something else. This criticism of state spending was first offered in 1850 by Bastiat. It is known as the broken window fallacy. It was not widely known in 1946. The second principle is this: a good economist looks at the effects of a government policy on the whole society over the long run, not just on one special-interest group in the short run. Good economics begins with these two principles. If these two principles had been honored after 1929, Keynesian economics would never have achieved the dominance that it has in government and academia.

I use this book as part of the first-year economics course for the Ron Paul Curriculum. I don’t start with it. I start with Robert Murphy’s textbook for high school students. I introduce Hazlitt’s book in the final third of the course. I want to make certain that they understand the power of Hazlitt’s simple twin analytic tools. You don’t have to read a whole textbook to understand the basics of economics. To prove this, I make them read a whole textbook before they read Hazlitt’s book.

Defenders of the free market today have no idea what Hazlitt was facing in 1946. I go into some of the background in my introductory lecture on the book. I want the students to understand the depths from which free market economics has risen since 1946.

Watch Video Here.

 Reprinted with permission from GaryNorth.com.