Дуже хороша книга, але з трохи оманливою назвою (здається, це в мене стандартна претензія до 99% прочитаних книг).
Тут йдеться про суть економіки і вказана одна з основних помилок, яку роблять дуже багато економістів (і ще більше політиків) - оцінювати ефект законів чи будь-яких інших "акцій", обираючи короткочасну перспективу і виділивши лише одну групу, на яку направлена дія закону, і забуваючи про вплив на всі інші групи через деякий час.
Більшість книги - це саме приклади подібних дій з боку політиків, до яких наслідків вони мали привести "в задумі", і до яких привели в реальному житті через декілька років.

„Die Kunst des Wirtschaftens besteht darin, nicht nur die unmittelbaren, sondern auch die langfristigen Auswirkungen jeder Maßnahme zu sehen; sie besteht ferner darin, die Folgen jedes Vorgehens nicht nur für eine, sondern für alle Gruppen zu bedenken.“ (S. 27)
Diese Prämissen wendet Hazlitt in 24 Fallbeispielen konsequent an und kommt so zu überraschenden Ergebnissen. Hazlitt gelingt es, volkswirtschafliche Zusammenhänge in einfacher Sprache unmittelbar einleuchtend zu erklären. Auch wenn der Text schon recht alt ist, so ist er doch hochaktuell: ein Kapitel ist zum Beispiel der Mietpreisbindung und deren Folgen gewidmet.

The point of this book is to show that there are facts that economists have worked out over the years that are now all but laws that can be used to determine how we should structure our interactions so as to provide the best possible benefit to the greatest possible number. These laws ought to be followed to the letter as ANY mucking about with them can only lead to tears. Unfortunately, it has always been the case that politicians (and even some economists – particularly economists contaminated by the loose thinking of Marx, Keynes or Galbraith) distort these laws either because they don’t understand them or because they have been misguided by wishful thinking. If only there was a greater understanding of economic theory in the community then we would all be so much better off. We would also be much less likely to be fooled by the fallacies that repeatedly undermine both productivity and growth.

Fortunately, the great truths of economics can be summed up in one rather pithy little lesson – and that is, when judging the worth of any economic policy you must not just look at the immediate and local effects you think the policy may have, but rather look for all of the broader and long-term effects of these policies. About 23 myths are analysed to show how they ‘make sense’ only when considered in a narrow way, but fall apart once analysed more broadly. When this is done it is also found that anything that interferes with the free operation of the market invariably cause effects that are the exact opposite to those intended. The market rules ok! and those seeking to improve on the operation of the market – particularly those seeking to redistribute wealth or make the economy ‘fairer’ in some way ALWAYS end up making the economy less fair and paradoxically hurting those that they had intended to help.

I have to say that I find it remarkable that economists (particularly those of the radical neo-classical school) still think the ‘laws’ of economics are immutable and incontrovertible truths, truths with the same force as the laws of physics, and therefore believe that anyone who dares disagree with them is, by definition, ignorant or deluded or both. I guess all ideologues are certain of the core tenets of their ideology. But as the history of the past year or so has shown yet again, we are most in need of saving from those who know the truth.

I read this book because I started reading another book – Filthy Lucre – and this one was so highly recommended at the start of that, that I thought it might be wise to read this one first. I don’t want to imply that I learnt nothing from this book. In fact, some of the ground covered here has made me question some of my fundamental assumptions about how things work in the world – some of the arguments were quite new to me. However some seemed like pure nonsense, particularly the rubbish here about trade unions and wages and how the market is best placed to set wages on the basis of the productivity of labour (an idea that is stated repeatedly, but we are never shown a mechanism how this would ever take place. In fact, we are shown the exact opposite in the examples used to ‘prove’ the counter-productive nature of unions seeking better pay…

I’m going to work my way though what I think is one of the counter-intuitive laws discussed in this book, Ricardo’s theory of comparative advantage or why free trade is always good and anything that interferes with free trade (import restrictions, tariffs or import replacement strategies) is always bad.

I want to start by saying that I think there is something to this idea (much more than I would have admitted to prior to reading this book) and that I’m not setting out to simply refute it. Ricardo’s idea of comparative advantage (the core idea of free trade, an explanation of which can be found here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparat...) is something I’ve only recently been made aware of – I have found it discussed in two books I’ve read recently by other radical free market types.

I think it is fair to say that much of what we currently hear and then think about trade could probably be summed up in the phrase, “All exports are good, all imports are bad”. However, this is clearly nonsense if you give it even a moment’s thought. In fact, the only reason, in the end, why we would bother to export anything would be to be able to afford to import things – otherwise exporting makes virtually no sense at all. As Hazlitt points out, in the end imports and exports need to equal each other.

The myths he is seeking to dispel are numerous and long standing. For example, he is seeking to show that trade does not reduce wages to the lowest common denominator (therefore tariffs do nothing to protect local wages and in fact make workers worse off), trade does not make a country less productive, but always more so, and trade is not a competition between countries, but a free exchange and therefore must be mutually beneficial by definition or it could not occur in the first place.

The ‘myth’ that allowing imports from third world countries either has the effect of reducing local wages to third world levels or kills off local industries unable to compete with these lower labour costs is a fairly deeply entrenched one in the Western psyche. The myth suggests that to save our local industries from being swamped by cheap imports we need to erect tariff barriers or other means of restricting imports. But this is based on the idea that there is a limit to the quantity of goods and services that are needed in the world. The fact that other countries may be able to produce goods cheaper than we are able to is not a threat to our productivity – even if it does mean that certain of our less productive industries will end up going to the wall. The point is that this is only the visible effect of trade that comes from a narrow and short-term view of trade’s effects. For trade to make sense, however, to the person that we are trading with they must also import things from us – and if their exports kill off one of our less productive industries, well, actually, we should view that as a good thing. Because it then means that our local capital will be forced to move to one of our more productive industries, one in which we do have a competitive advantage.

A fair amount of rose tint seems to have been added to the glasses used to view this version of free trade. The problem is that although some of the primary assumptions stated here do seem to make sense if everything else is held equal (that is, that over time exports and imports would seem to need to equal each other) in the real world that does not seem to have been the case at all. For example, look at the USA and its massive and growing trade deficit with the rest of the world that is basically being funded from borrowings from China. The current frightening state of the US deficit can be found here http://www.americaneconomicalert.org/... and what this shows is that the deficit is long standing and appears very unlikely to ever miraculously pop back into balance any time soon in the way that theory predicts. This does seem to put a bit of a hole in the theory espoused in this book. Not to be too nasty about it, but the view espoused in this book about trade seems not to have kept up with the one lesson of the title.

There are other problems with trade (and free trade in particular) that I have other concerns over. Firstly, one of the problems with the world is what gets called neo-colonialism. The whole problem arises when counties abandon general agriculture that produces a broad variety of food to sustain their own populations and instead produce ‘cash crops’ due to their ‘comparative advantage’. Free trade sounds great in theory, but if all you grow are bananas and the price of bananas drops then your ability to make a living or even feed yourself drops too.

I’m coming to the view that in all things variety is the spice of life. Creating monocultures is bad for the environment, destroying manufacturing industries in first world countries and somehow thinking we can live purely off service industries is bad for the world economy, and forcing third world counties to have single commodity outputs is crushingly bad for their development. We need to find ways to put diversity back into the world economy – I’m not necessarily talking about protection, but definitely diversity.

The final edition of this book was published just before Reagan came to power in the US and Thatcher in Britain. In fact, the last chapter is a lament that more of the ideas espoused in the 1946 edition of this book had never been taken up and applied. Now that we have gone though thirty years of the radical neo-liberal experiment and now that it has caused so much damage, surely it is time to see if we can create an economy in the interests of people – rather than smashing people so that they better fit with the needs of the economy. Of course, that is just a thought…

Much prefer Basic Economics by Thomas Sowell. This book was dry, data light, and more of a political pamphlet than anything else.

This book smacks down Keynesian economics with good ol' Austrian economics.

Highlights (these are from memory so they may not be verbatim):

"Inflation is the opiate of the masses" (LOVE the shoutout to Marx!)

"Inflation is taxation of the most regressive kind."

"The art of economics is not just seeing the immediate but the long term effects of any act or policy. You must trace the consequences of that policy not only for one group but for every group."

I love the chapters on inflation, unions, free trade, tariffs, rent control... Heck, I loved every chapter.

Excellent.

Συνοπτική, αλλά οξυδερκής και διαυγής παρουσίαση των απόψεων του συγγραφέα για την οικονομία. Κάποιες πικρές αλήθειες που δεν τολμούμε να αντιμετωπίσουμε και που πολλές φορές παραβλέπουμε. Δεν πρόκειται ωστόσο για έκθεση μιας ολοκληρωμένης οικονομικής θεωρίας -ούτε κάν της Αυστριακής σχολής του φον Μίζες [του οποίου ο συγγραφέας δηλώνει πως είναι πνευματικό τέκνο]. Αυτό είναι λογικό, εφόσον ο Χάζλιτ δεν είναι οικονομολόγος αλλά δημοσιογράφος και απευθύνεται στο ευρύ κοινό. Αυτό όμως είναι και το ισχυρό σημείο του βιβλίου. Δεν πρόκειται δηλαδή για ένα κουραστικό οικονομικό εγχειρίδιο με διαγράμματα και πίνακες, αλλά για ευφυείς συλλογισμούς, διατυπωμένους με σαφήνεια και πειστικότητα. Ενα αξιόλογο βιβλίο που δεν μπορεί να προσπεράσει κανείς εύκολα όσο κι αν διαφωνεί με τις θέσεις του συγγραφέα.

This is the book everybody should read and re-read to understand how the economy works and how wealth is created or destroyed. His broken window analogy is the thing that sticks with you years after reading it. The reader can apply these lessons to government policy to see how long-term problems in the economy were created by politicians looking for short-term solutions.

Hazlitt's conversational style and common sense reminds one of Thomas Sowell. I read the updated 1978 version that revises and extends his original 1946 work.

A must read, especially for teens, if you want to know about good economics and not the economics that the government wants you to believe.

Muy buen libro para introducirse a la economía. Es un poco anacrónico, pero es lo normal en un libro escrito hace casi 80 años. Lo que no es nada anacrónica es la lección ni la teoría que se esconde detrás de toda la obra. Si pudiera volver atrás en el tiempo sería el primer libro que leería sin tener ni idea de economía. (El prólogo de Rallo mejor leerlo al final)

I think it’s time we all grew up and stopped believing in the tooth fairy, Santa Claus and laissez-faire economics.

Hazlitt’s fallacies were oversimplified to the point of stupidity. They went something like this: if you see someone getting stabbed, don’t call the police. Because not only are you wasting resources on someone who is likely to die, but on the way, the police could run over two people, making the hypothetical benefit/risk ratio not worth the phone call in the first place. Furthermore, you are diverting resources away from someone who could potentially need them, for say, a broken toe.

A big yikes from me. I almost got second-hand embarrassment reading this book in a 21st century context, knowing every piece of shitty textbook economics Hazlitt spouted would come back to bite him in the ass in an age of neoliberalism and late-stage capitalism. Hazlitt would immediately shit his pants in fear if he saw how out-of-touch his theories are in light of the GFC or Royal Commission into Banking in Australia. Which makes this book an out of date introduction to conservative economics that relies solely on catastrophised hypotheticals, that are just annoyingly American.

I originally gave it one star because it's full of so many of the "lessons," devoid of any historical or institutional context and any critical self-awareness, that right-libertarian trolls have in mind when they tell you to "Study economics!" Then I upgraded it to two because, even so, it's still less stupid than a column by John Stossel or Thomas Sowell or an FEE or FFF op-ed.