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I am still amazed at its freshness. Although the first edition appeared in 1946, apart from a mere few words in it (for example, it holds up to ridicule the economic theories of Eleanor Roosevelt, about which more below) its chapter headings appear as if they were ripped from today’s headlines. Unless I greatly miss my guess, this will still be true in another 60 years from now, namely in 2068. Talk about a book for the ages. Other books on Austrian economics, too, are classics, and will be read as long as man is still interested in the subject. Mises’s Human Action and Rothbard’s Man, Economy, and State come to mind in this regard. But those are epic tomes, numbering in the hundreds of pages. This little book of Hazlitt’s is merely an introduction, written, specifically, for the beginner. I wonder of how many introductions to a subject it can be truly said that they are classics? I would wager very, very few, if any at all.
The art ofeconomics consists in looking not merely at the immediate hut at the longer effects of any act or policy; it consists in tracing the consequences of that policy not merely for one group but for all groups.