Economics in One Lesson

hanelyp · Post by **hanelyp** » Mon Jan 23, 2012 3:59 am

http://www.fee.org/library/books/econom ... ne-lesson/

An essay outlining and explaining several common fallacies in economic policy. Solidly refutes the validity of many union and government intervention practices.

ladajo · Post by **ladajo** » Mon Jan 23, 2012 2:40 pm

I haven't seen this since undergrad. Thanks for posting!

I am currently looking for a cleaner copy. This version has some scanning artifacts where h's become b's, vice versa, and other character recognition errors. I think it may be missing a bit here and there as well. Overall, a nice romp through memory lane.
Too bad modern armchair econimists (politicians) cannot think in simple terms like this. They justify most of what they do with obscuration, conflation and misleading detail. I always liked the basic truth in Hazlitt's argument, to wit; 'If it seems wrong or doesn't make sense up front, it probably isn't a good thing'.

I would love that Hazlitt was around today to do a modern re-write. If he survived the heart-attack in seeing what we have done to ourselves since he penned it.

The development of atomic power, though it could confer unimaginable blessings on mankind, is something that is dreaded by the owners of coal mines and oil wells.

In the course of our study, also, we have rediscovered an old friend. He is the Forgotten Man of William Graham Sumner. The reader will remember that in Sumner's essay, which appeared in 1883:

As soon as A observes something which seems to him to be wrong, from which X suffering is, A talks it over with B, and A and B then propose to get a law passed to remedy the evil and help X. Their law always proposes to determine what C shall do for X or, in the better case, what A, B and C shall do for X. . . . What I want to do is to look up C. . . . I call him the Forgotten Man. . . . He is the man who never is thought of. He is the victim of the reformer, social speculator and philanthropist, and I hope to show you before I get through that he deserves your notice both for his character and for the many burdens which are laid upon him.

It is an historic irony that when this phrase, the Forgotten Man, was revived in the nineteen thirties, it was applied, not to C, but to X ; and C, who was then being asked to support still more X's, was more completely forgotten than ever. It is C, the Forgotten Man, who is always called upon to stanch the politician's bleeding heart by paying for his vicarious generosity.

ladajo · Post by **ladajo** » Mon Jan 23, 2012 3:08 pm

Better copy here:

http://mises.org/books/economics_in_one ... azlitt.pdf

ladajo · Post by **ladajo** » Mon Jan 23, 2012 3:15 pm

And here is a link to Sumner giving an Oral expanded verion of "The Forgotten Man".

http://www.swarthmore.edu/SocSci/rbanni ... otten.html

And here is the original published version:
http://mises.org/daily/2485

choff · Post by **choff** » Tue Jan 24, 2012 4:49 am

I would be curious as to what the original author would have made of this video.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_9wYu1SR ... re=related

Also the experience of Guernsey Island and President Andrew Jackson as related in the video. He doesn't have a great deal to say on the Great Depression. His analysis assumes the system isn't fixed from the start, but maybe I'm just being sentimental because he's slagging the old Socred's.

mdeminico · Post by **mdeminico** » Fri Feb 03, 2012 4:37 pm

I think the "little red hen" is the best of all

choff · Post by **choff** » Sat Feb 04, 2012 8:37 pm

mdeminico wrote:I think the "little red hen" is the best of all

Perhaps you would also like 'The Secret of Oz.'