Concluding Hazlitt

You've made it! This is the final lesson of the course and your final reading in Economics in One Lesson. Chapter 24, "The Lesson Restated," is a conclusion and summary of the arguments you've seen repeated throughout the book. The central lesson of this chapter (and of the entire book) is the same one we learned in the first week of the course: economics is about looking at the general interest over the long term, not a special interest in the short term.

Because people tend to focus on just one group and just on short-term consequences, they fall into numerous economic fallacies.

Now few people recognize the necessary implications of the economic statements they are constantly making. When they say that the way to economic salvation is to increase 'credit,' it is just as if they said that the way to economic salvation is to increase debt: these are different names for the same thing seen from opposite sides.

Henry Hazlitt, Economics in One Lesson, Chapter 24

You've read about many of these fallacies during the course, and Hazlitt will reference many of them in this chapter. As you read, pay particular attention to Hazlitt's discussions of the science of economics, the "Forgotten Man," and what we should do when certain groups are hurt by economic progress.

Read Chapter 24: "The Lesson Restated" in Economics in One Lesson. [This may be Chapter 25 in some newer editions.] When you've finished reading, click the button below to continue with the rest of the lesson.

A key idea at the end of this chapter is that we need to recognize that economic progress does hurt some individuals and groups. But that doesn't mean we should stop progressing. It does mean we need to use the gains from our progress to help those who are hurt by it. We can't look at these groups' problems with a narrow focus; they must be viewed in the context of the whole economy. Hazlitt concludes, "To see the problem as a whole, and not in fragments: that is the goal of economic science."