If you are looking for the perfect gift for anyone who wants to understand the Economics behind all that is going on today, from the fiscal cliff to Greece, I have it.
Henry Hazlitt wrote Economics in One Lesson in 1946, then updated in 1978. It reads like today’s news, because it is filled with economic truth, not political or editorial wishful thinking.
You can read quickly through its 210 pages, or you can feast on each paragraph. It is that well written, and easy for anyone to understand, even politicians.
Here is a short excerpt from Chapter 15:
“The whole argument for this book may be summed up in the statement that in studying the effects of any given economic proposal we must trace not merely the immediate results but the results in the long run, not merely the primary consequences but the secondary consequences, and not merely the effects on some special group but the effects on everyone…It is foolish and misleading to concentrate our attention merely on some special point—to examine, for example, merely what happens in one industry without considering what happens in all. But it is precisely from the persistent and lazy habit of thinking only of some particular industry or process in isolation that the major fallacies of economics stem.”
The book is widely available, but if you purchase it from the von Mises Institute, you will also help that vocal center for libertarian economic policies.
Give it to everyone on your list, and then have many rounds of great discussions in the New Year!
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