The future of economic policy

All of the inflation is credited to you. Contemplate, if you will, whether that makes for a fair society. Is the Welfare State the source of the inequalities it seeks to remedy?

Pointing out the huge losses in purchasing power in the decade to 1978 of the West German mark (35%), the Swiss Franc (40%), the American dollar (43%), the Swedish krone (47%), the French franc (50%), the Italian lira (56%), the Japanese yen (57%), the British pound (61%), the Brazilian cruzeiro (89%), and the Uruguayan, Chilean, and Argentinian pesos more than 99%, Hazlitt wrote: "I leave it to the reader to picture the chaos that these rates of depreciation of money were producing in the economies of these countries and the suffering in the lives of millions of their inhabitants. As I have pointed out, these inflations, themselves the cause of so much human misery, were in turn in large part the consequence of other policies of government intervention. Practically all these interventions unintentionally illustrate and underline the basic lesson of this book. All were enacted on the assumption that they would confer some immediate benefit on some special group. Those who enacted them failed to take heed of their secondary consequences – failed to consider what their effect would be in the long run on all groups."

Hazlitt concludes:

"The outlook is dark, but it is not entirely without hope. Here and there one can detect a break in the clouds. More and more people are becoming aware that government has nothing to give them without first taking it away from somebody else – or from themselves. Increased handouts to selected groups mean merely increased taxes, or increased deficits and increased inflation. And inflation, in the end, misdirects and disorganizes production. Even a few politicians are beginning to recognize this, and some of them even to state it clearly."