Economics in One Lesson, Henry Hazlitt

Economics in One Lesson: The Shortest and Surest Way to Understand Basic Economics is an introduction to free market economics written by Henry Hazlitt and published in 1946. The book is based on Frédéric Bastiat's essay Ce qu'on voit et ce qu'on ne voit pas (English: "What is Seen and What is Not Seen").

The "One Lesson" is stated in Part One of the book: The art of economics consists in looking not merely at the immediate but 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.

Part Two consists of twenty-four chapters, each of them demonstrating the lesson by tracing the effects of one common economic belief, and showing that common economic belief to be a fallacy. Among its policy recommendations are free trade, opposition to any and all price controls, opposition to monetary inflation, and opposition to "stimulative" governmental expenditures:

There are men regarded today as brilliant economists, who deprecate saving and recommend squandering on a national scale as the way of economic salvation; and when anyone points to what the consequences of these policies will be in the long run, they reply flippantly, as might the prodigal son of a warning father: 'In the long run we are all dead.' And such shallow wisecracks pass as devastating epigrams and the ripest wisdom.