One Lesson
An excerpt from Henry Hazlitt's masterpiece: "The bad economist sees only what immediately strikes the eye; the good economist also looks beyond. The bad economist sees only the direct consequences of a proposed course; the good economist looks also at the longer and indirect consequences. The bad economist sees only what the effect of a given policy has been or will be on one particular group; the good economist inquires also what the effect of the policy will be on all groups." FULL ARTICLE
Comments (2)
EnEm
The Broken Window and The Blessings of Destruction: Concepts implemented very effectively in the Iraq war by Halliburton, Bechtel and the PNAC group and blessed by "great captains of industry, by chambers of commerce, by labor union leaders, by editorial writers and newspaper columnists and radio commentators, by learned statisticians using the most refined techniques, by professors of economics in our best universities".
A sad commentary on human action.
Published: June 5, 2008 10:01 AM
fundamentalist
Very important lesson. Another way of putting it is to say that good economists look beyond the immediate cause of a problem. The debate over oil prices is a good example. Some people want to focus on the immediate causes and ignore the ultimate cause, money manipulation.
Published: June 5, 2008 10:15 AM