Henry Hazlitt
Henry Hazlitt was born on this day in 1894. Hazlitt was the Frederic Bastiat of the twentieth century. His journalist credentials were impressive and included stints at the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times.
Perhaps because he was a journalist, not an academic, he was a master at presenting the case for free-market economics in plain and penetrating prose. His book, published in 1946, Economics in One Lesson, is a classic introduction to economics and the fallacies of government meddling through price controls and public works projects. It still has not been equalled.
One of Hazlitt's biggest fans was the great craftsman of the American language, H.L. Mencken. He called him"one of the few economists in human history who can really write."
A lesser known work of Hazlitt, a novel, Time Will Run Back, is one of my favorites. It is also prophetic. Written in 1951, it is set in the future when a Communist dictator rules the planet and all memory of" capitalism" has been wiped out. Despite this, it has an optimistic message. Eventually the market eventually reasserts itself through a process of discovery and the Communist society is transformed peacefully.
Hazlitt died in 1993, a year short of his one hundreth birthday.