Henry Hazlitt explains why politicians who promise salvation through government are dangerous: “politicians and governments have been promising the voters that they could not only bring perpetual full employment, prosperity, and ‘economic growth,’ but solve the age-old problem of poverty overnight. And the end result is not merely that accomplishment has fallen far short of promises, but that the attempt to fulfill the promises has brought an enormous increase in government spending, an enormous increase in the burden of taxes, chronic deficits, chronic inflation, and a constant loss in the buying power of the people’s earnings and savings. ‘Social Security’ has brought an ominous increase in social insecurity.” FULL ARTICLE
Source link: http://blog.mises.org/5814/man-vs-the-welfare-state/
Man vs. the Welfare State
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We have a situation in Florida, where the voters are clamoring for massive governmental regulatory interference in the property insurance industry.
People will never learn, when government takes over, what was a bad situation is turned into a total fiasco.
The real solution is to shut down the state’s insurer of last resort and to completely remove the existing regulations on the insurance companies.
Unfortunately, the legislature and governor will take the spineless route and give in to this clamoring by the people.
Mark:
Could you elaborate? I’m guessing people want government regulation of property insurance premiums. If people want to live in a hurricane zone, then they need build concrete bunkers, or they need to build stilt houses with break-aways for the utility connections.
How’s this for government distortion: right on top of the effin’ San Andreas Fault, California builds two-tiered highways.
Reactionary:
Your exactly right, people are clamoring for property insurance premium controls.
http://www.floridatoday.com
They are currently featuring the insurance issue in our local paper, Florida Today.
with the internet and free trade, eventually the state will become irrelevant.
“with the internet and free trade, eventually the state will become irrelevant.”
Phillip, you jest, no?
The governing equation for management of all Media of Exchange is DEFAULT = INTEREST + INFLATION.
I searched this book for occurrences of the word INFLATION. It occurs 71 times
I searched for INTEREST. It occurs 41 times.
The word MEDIA occurs twice.
The word EXCHANGE occurs 30 times.
The author never refers to Media of Exchange (MOE). He uses the term “purchasing media” and “attractive media”.
But he uses the word MONEY 125 times. And money is nothing but Media of Exchange (MOE).
He uses the word TAXES 35 times.
I searched for DEFAULT. It appears nowhere in the book.
By searching for these words, I can gauge if the treatise is dealing with MOE and if the author has a clue about how MOE is properly managed.
Since he uses all the pertinent buzz words but neglects the most important word (DEFAULT), he demonstrates that he doesn’t understand management of MOE. Without that understanding, how useful can his writing be to us?
Todd Marshall
Plantersville, TX.
I remember when I first read this work shortly after it was published. I had only read Hazlett’s “Economics in One Lesson” and essays in The Freeman, but was quite impressed with his analysis. Although I regard his book on ethics (“Foundations of Morality”–his best work) and his work on the Keynsians (“Failure of the New Economics”) better, it still reads quite well. You might want to try those works in considerding Hazlitt’s writings.
I don’t recall that many of his early essays have ever been reprinted and these were his best work, though.
Just a thought.
Just Ken
kgregglv@cox.net
http://classicalliberalism.blogspot.com/
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