Henry Hazlitt Quotes

I think democracies are prone to inflation because politicians will naturally spend [excessively] - they have the power to print money and will use money to get votes. If you look at inflation under the Roman Empire, with absolute rulers, they had much greater inflation, so we don't set the record. It happens over the long-term under any form of government.

I continue to believe that the American people have a love-hate relationship with inflation. They hate inflation but love everything that causes it.

The problem is that the economy isn't growing fast enough to accommodate the level of spending produced through the democratic process.

When you get inflation, you get massive distortions of the economy.

Socialist governments traditionally do make a financial mess. They always run out of other people's money.

Under the guise of fighting inflation, COLA actually creates it.

Every Congressman, every Senator knows precisely what causes inflation...but can't, support the drastic reforms to stop it because it could cost him his job

It is human nature that when you see something work well, you do more of it. If, in its ceaseless quest for revenue, government sees a seemingly harmless method of raising funds without causing much inflation, it will grab on to it.

Prices always soar when there is a Congress government.

We are now speeding down the road of wasteful spending and debt, and unless we can escape we will be smashed in inflation.

The advocates of public control cannot do without inflation. They need it in order to finance their policy of reckless spending and of lavishly subsidizing and bribing the voters.

Examine the legacy that we inherited and what we did. We had boom-and-bust economics and a doubled national debt.

I regard reduction in Federal spending as one of the most important issues in this campaign. In my opinion it is the most direct and effective contribution that Government can make to business.

Inflation could be a very - is a likely consequence out of what's going on now.

It's the [George Bush] president's fiscal policies that have driven up the biggest deficits in American history. He's added more debt to the debt of the United States in four years than all the way from George Washington to Ronald Reagan put together.

The natural tendency of government, once in charge of money, is to inflate and to destroy the value of the currency.

Too often in recent history liberal governments have been wrecked on rocks of loose fiscal policy.

What the federal government does basically is borrow money from people and mail it to people.

I regard the inflation acts as wrong in all ways. Personally I am one of the noble army of debtors, and can stand it if others can. But it is a wretched business.

The top threat that gets very little focus from Washington these days is what Adm. Mike Mullen identified as the biggest threat to the U.S.: the American debt.

I served on the budget committee in the Senate, and I remember as vividly as if it were yesterday when we had a hearing in which Alan Greenspan came and justified increasing spending and cutting taxes, saying that we didn't really need to pay down the debt - outrageous in my view.

If a government resorts to inflation, that is, creates money in order to cover its budget deficits or expands credit in order to stimulate business, then no power on earth, no gimmick, device, trick or even indexation can prevent its economic consequences.

The best way to understand this whole issue is to look at what the government does: it takes money from some people, keeps a bunch of it, and gives the rest to other people.

Printing money is merely taxation in another form. Rather than robbing citizens of their money, government robs their money of its purchasing power.

If government manages to establish paper tickets or bank credit as money, as equivalent to gold grams or ounces, then the government, as dominant money-supplier, becomes free to create money costlessly and at will. As a result, this 'inflation' of the money supply destroys the value of the dollar or pound, drives up prices, cripples economic calculation, and hobbles and seriously damages the workings of the market economy.