by Henry Hazlitt
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Product Description
A simple, straightforward analysis of economic fallacies that are so prevalent they have almost become a new orthodoxy.
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Average Customer Review:
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful:
 STILL the best guide to clear economic reasoning, 2008-10-07
With all the bad theory and misinformation in the field of economics, Hazlitt's book serves a much-needed purpose. It teaches basic, self-evident principles that form the foundation for logical economic thought.
'Economics in One Lesson' should have perhaps been titled, 'Economic Policy in One Lesson', because Hazlitt is mainly concerned here with the effects of government policy on the market:
"...The whole of economics can be reduced to a single lesson, and that lesson can be reduced to a single sentence: 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."
Hazlitt's theorem is that much of our economic thought and government policy is based on fallacy. His method is to show an example of bad economic policy, explain how it adversely affects the market, and then teach good policy using logical reasoning. Along those lines, the book does not address basics such as supply and demand, but rather tackles questions like, "What is the effect of government credit on production?" Nonetheless, an absolute beginner should be able to understand the concepts presented here, even though the finer points may be lost. After reading this work, you will be able to analyze and evaluate economic policy and reason about its effects on the market.
Pay no heed to those that accuse Hazlitt of taking a narrow-minded, Libertarian viewpoint. Regardless of your economic/political affiliations, the truths presented in this book are so self-evident that, in my opinion, they are defensible on common sense alone and demonstrated throughout history.
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful:
A basis for real thought about our money and how its spent, 2008-08-31
Great gift for your teenager or aging hippy who thinks all problems can be resolved if only someone else would foot the bill. Highly recommended for anyone desiring to support either party this year - will be an enlightening read no matter the side or the viewpoint - But I guarantee you will call yourself to question for your current views regardless of which side you are on today.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
A Must Read for New Economists and Non Economists, 2008-08-05
Economics in One Lesson was written by a journalist, not an economist. That said, it offers clarity that many economists can't. But don't be fooled, Hazltt was one of the few journalists who could understand economics.
The book is designed to give you a basic understanding of economic thinking and logic. It is not filled with econometrics and regression analysis but with stories, thinking games, and logical puzzles.
The book is simple to read and comprehend yet absolutely devastating to socialist big-government thinking. The book moves through one logical fallacy of big government thinking after another, followed by examples of how absurd their thinking really is.
I recommend this as one a starter book on economic thinking right up their with Milton Friedman's free to choose. Minimal economic knowledge is required and you don't have to know any math. Basically...you should already know that a tariff or a duty is a tax on imported goods. If you don't, you should be able to figure that out based on the words usage in the text.
Final word: the simplest book for free market thinkers. If you like to argue with socialists, this book will give you the biggest bang for the buck.
2 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
 poorly written and organized, and generally disappointing, 2008-08-03
Based on other people's reviews, I thought this would be a fairly straightforward book that a person with a graduate degree but no background in economics (such as myself) would find easy to understand. That was definitely not the case, for a number of reasons.
First, the writing is not at all impressive. I know economists are not reputed to be particularly good writers, but come on, get yourself a good editor! Some of the sentences were so wordy and poorly constructed that I had to read them several times to figure out how the writer would have written them if he knew how to write at all. And THEN I had to figure out what the sentence said in terms of expanding my knowledge of economics. It was tedious, to say the least.
Additionally, the organization of the text within the chapters needs a significant amount of work. The chapters meander; if you are the type of person who likes to organize a chapter's contents into a mental outline as you read, good luck. This author clearly didn't start with an outline, mental or otherwise. It's like he developed each chapter based on chats he had in his living room, which he asked someone to transcribe, then chunked up into paragraphs and called it done.
The author also doesn't do a good job of explaining what different terms mean. What's the difference between a tax, a tariff, and a duty? Darned if I know, and I read about two-thirds of this book before deciding it definitely wasn't worth my time.
I also found the content he describes in his chapters to be somewhat outdated. It's hard to get a grasp of economics when you're trying to relate what you know about how a particular system works in the present to the way he's discussing it as working in the past. As I mentioned, I have no background in economics, so I have no way of knowing whether the particular system he's discussing has undergone a massive overhaul at some point, such that the system he's describing no longer bears any resemblance to the system I know. If you can't figure out how to integrate what you're reading into your existing knowledge base, you can't expect to expand your knowledge base.
I also wish the author were more up-front about his political bent from the outset, as this would have helped me to interpret what he was saying in the context of my own political views.
Overall, I do not recommend this book at all. Maybe I'd have a different take if I had read it for a class I was taking, so that the instructor could fill in the blanks and help put certain things into context. But just reading it on my own, with no background in economics to draw on, was pointless.
I'm going to try naked economics next. Reviews seem to indicate that it's written by an economist who can actually write.
6 of 29 people found the following review helpful:
Capitalism straight, in small unpalatable doses, 2008-06-13
If you want your faith in market forces and low taxation reinforced, this is a straightforward, but blinkered attempt to make you forget all about government regulation. Funny that west-European countries with bigger taxation and more government influence have less crime, better education, better health care, better TV programmes than the US. They also organise their politics better, so that the tax money is better spent. It did set me right on one or two points, and parts are written in a spuriously funny way, but it is too biased to be really informing . Clearly the writer has never listened to people he doesn't agree with.
If you have an open mind compare this dangerous nonsense with the writings of Naomi Klein to see how unfettered capitalism works out in practice.
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