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Economics in Three Lessons and One Hundred Economics Laws: Two Works in One Volume
Economics in Three Lessons
Henry Hazlitt's 1946 book Economics in One Lesson sold more than a million copies. It is perhaps the best selling economics book of all time. In this volume, Hunter Lewis, a Hazlitt admirer and student, provides a sequel and update.
The central lesson of Hazlitt's seminal work is that economic thought and policy must consider all the consequences of an action, not just the immediate or most visible ones. Hazlitt is right that this is the kernel of all good economics.
Lewis covers this theme and also introduces two more lessons: how a free and uncontrolled price system creates prosperity and how a controlled or manipulated price system creates only crony capitalist corruption and, ultimately, poverty and economic failure. The great merit of this volume is its simplicity. Anyone can read and understand it. It is an ideal introduction to economics.
One Hundred Economic Laws
In this groundbreaking volume, Lewis does what no one has attempted to do, at least not for many decades. It collects in one place some of the most important laws of economics.
Everyone understands the importance of understanding the laws of physics and other natural sciences. Are there also laws of economics? Can understanding them also make our lives better? This volume answers with a resounding yes to both questions.
We need the laws of economics to help guide our choices and actions in a very uncertain world. We also need them to protect us from the “thinkers for hire” who, paid by special economic interests, try to persuade us to ignore reality.
This short book is also a complete course in economics. Unlike the dry-as-dust and often irrelevant textbooks forced on high school and college students, it is written in a lively and even sparkling style.
Henry Hazlitt's 1946 book Economics in One Lesson sold more than a million copies. It is perhaps the best selling economics book of all time. In this volume, Hunter Lewis, a Hazlitt admirer and student, provides a sequel and update.
The central lesson of Hazlitt's seminal work is that economic thought and policy must consider all the consequences of an action, not just the immediate or most visible ones. Hazlitt is right that this is the kernel of all good economics.
Lewis covers this theme and also introduces two more lessons: how a free and uncontrolled price system creates prosperity and how a controlled or manipulated price system creates only crony capitalist corruption and, ultimately, poverty and economic failure. The great merit of this volume is its simplicity. Anyone can read and understand it. It is an ideal introduction to economics.
One Hundred Economic Laws
In this groundbreaking volume, Lewis does what no one has attempted to do, at least not for many decades. It collects in one place some of the most important laws of economics.
Everyone understands the importance of understanding the laws of physics and other natural sciences. Are there also laws of economics? Can understanding them also make our lives better? This volume answers with a resounding yes to both questions.
We need the laws of economics to help guide our choices and actions in a very uncertain world. We also need them to protect us from the “thinkers for hire” who, paid by special economic interests, try to persuade us to ignore reality.
This short book is also a complete course in economics. Unlike the dry-as-dust and often irrelevant textbooks forced on high school and college students, it is written in a lively and even sparkling style.
- GenresEconomicsNonfiction
425 pages, Kindle Edition
Published October 1, 2017
4 people are currently reading
74 people want to read
About the author
Hunter Lewis
49 books19 followersRenowned investor and author Hunter Lewis has written eight books on the financial issues of America, providing real solutions to turn the economy around.
He is the former CEO of Cambridge Associates, a global investment firm he co-founded after graduating from Harvard University. The company’s clients represent three-quarters of higher education endowment assets in the United States as well as other nonprofit groups and high net worth individuals. Lewis has also served on boards and committees of 15 leading nonprofit organizations, including environmental, teaching, research and cultural groups, as well as the World Bank. Lewis runs the successful watchdog website AgainstCronyCapitalism.org with fellow writer and political consultant Nick Sorrentino.
Reviewers across the globe have noted Lewis’ unique economic insights, and he’s shared his expert opinion on national television programs including CBS’ Money Matters and NBC’s TODAY. His writings have appeared in the New York Times, The Times of London, Washington Post, The Atlantic, Forbes.com and other media. The Charlottesville, Va. author’s newest book releases, “Free Prices Now!: Fixing the Economy
by Abolishing the Fed” and “Crony Capitalism in America: 2008-2012,” hit bookshelves on
September 1, 2013.
He is the former CEO of Cambridge Associates, a global investment firm he co-founded after graduating from Harvard University. The company’s clients represent three-quarters of higher education endowment assets in the United States as well as other nonprofit groups and high net worth individuals. Lewis has also served on boards and committees of 15 leading nonprofit organizations, including environmental, teaching, research and cultural groups, as well as the World Bank. Lewis runs the successful watchdog website AgainstCronyCapitalism.org with fellow writer and political consultant Nick Sorrentino.
Reviewers across the globe have noted Lewis’ unique economic insights, and he’s shared his expert opinion on national television programs including CBS’ Money Matters and NBC’s TODAY. His writings have appeared in the New York Times, The Times of London, Washington Post, The Atlantic, Forbes.com and other media. The Charlottesville, Va. author’s newest book releases, “Free Prices Now!: Fixing the Economy
by Abolishing the Fed” and “Crony Capitalism in America: 2008-2012,” hit bookshelves on
September 1, 2013.
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
December 24, 2017
Let me preface this review with a disclaimer: I am not an economist, nor am I a student of economy. I hold a bachelor's and a master's degree in communication. I, therefore, submit that I may be mistaken in any economic conclusions I have reached due to misunderstandings of economic theory. In addition, my normal reading genres are fantasy, science fiction and thrillers. I felt like expanding my horizons and recently chose some non-fiction, including this two-in-one from Lewis.
When I picked up this book from my local library, I thought -- especially as touted on the back cover -- it would be a layman's primer on economics. However, the more I read, the more I realized the book serves as Hunter Lewis' (admittedly, well-deserved) indictment of Keynesian economics. During the book's early pages, I also began to feel that Lewis was also being critical of Democratic economic policy, including and up to (as the book was written just this year) the Obama administration as well as Clinton and Sanders candidacies. I lean Democrat, but I have no problem with such critiques (I have made them myself) and decided to give Lewis a chance, reading every word of all three of his lessons and 100 laws.
I do not necessarily disagree with Lewis' primary theme here: free prices (free of control and manipulation) should, indeed, "discover and inform," as he puts it, all parties in the economy of what is going on in an honest manner. What bothered me as I continued to read was that I didn't see how to get from where we are now to where Lewis would like us to be. In other words, if we accept that the way things are now is poor, even harmful economic policy, I kept waiting to see a step-by-step plan in how to reach a true free price market economy without massive (albeit, likely short-term) harm to those Lewis' professes such an economy would benefit: the poor and middle class.
The closest I got to thinking he was offering a plan was "Law 90: Corollary D of Law of Banking: Reform (Banking can be put on a more solid foundation most obviously by eliminating fractional reserve banking." In this law, Lewis says we must 1) eliminate fractional reserve banking (in other words, begin requiring banks to have 100 percent lending reserves), 2) abolish the Fed and, 3) "reform a world monetary system currently run by central banks." Mind you, this is only one part of a much more complex topic, but an important one since it's about the only place where I begin to see him putting a plan together.
Again, however, what he doesn't do is provide a way to enact these changes in any way that isn't massively disruptive. How long do we wait to abolish the Fed after eliminating fractional reserve banking? What effect will eliminating that form of banking have on the system before we reach Lewis' goal? How should we go about reforming the world monetary system in a way that doesn't throw the world into financial chaos?
I'm not saying Lewis is wrong; I am saying he doesn't go far enough in explaining the how of getting us from here to there.
Also, Lewis is not objective, as I expected an author of an economic primer to be. As I stated, he comes across as critical of Democratic policies, repeatedly calling out Presidents Obama, Clinton, Hoover (who was actually Republican, but Lewis doesn't treat him as such, I suppose because of the way the parties stood at the time) and FDR, as well as recent candidates Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders. In contrast, he only directly names President Reagan once, for linking government Social Security payments to inflation indexes; President George W. Bush once, for stating he was "abandoning free market principles to save the free market system" (which Lewis felt had to have come from a former Goldman Sachs CEO out to save his firm); and -- not even by name -- President Richard Nixon's 1971 decision to eliminate the direct international convertibility of the United States dollar to gold (a/k/a the gold standard).
Let me go back to Reagan for a moment, for one of the more contradictory of Lewis' laws, "No. 52: Corollary of Law of Economic Equality and Inequality: The 'Trickle Down' Fallacy (We need not fear that the success of the rich will impoverish the poor)." Oddly, Lewis makes no mention of Reagan here, despite being one of the biggest proponents of trickle down economics. Yet, Lewis criticizes the trickle down policy, calling it a "fable." Then take the very next law, "No. 53: Corollary of Law of Economic Equality and Inequality: Wealth Taxes (If you want to help the poor or middle class, do not tax wealth)." And, no, I'm not mixing up wealth with money, as Lewis correctly points out are not the same thing. Here, Lewis posits (and I'm paraphrasing here) that taxing wealth will keep the rich from either reinvesting or giving to charity. This would be bad, he says, because it would "impoverish everyone" rather than "to improve the lives who have the least." But he never quite gets to explaining how this would hurt individual members of the poor or middle class. Still, if not taxing the wealthy helps the impoverished somehow, isn't that trickle-down economics? (Again, my apologies if my lack of understanding is muddling things here; I just thought it was odd.)
Once again, I am not saying Lewis is inherently wrong in his criticisms, but I find it curious that there is a lack of any real focus on Republican economic foibles (especially since his call against crony capitalism should, inevitably, include lawmakers from both sides of the aisle) and makes no attempt to review President Trump's proposals. Unfortunately, while I do know the book was published this year (2017), the book's front matter only lists the year, not the month of publication. Perhaps not enough time had passed for Lewis to undertake a reasonable review. I find this unlikely, though, since he brings up Hillary Clinton and Sanders often.
Needless to say, this book wasn't what I hoped it would be or even the book I thought it could be once I started reading. These are not three economic lessons for lay people, but a damning treatise about how terrible the economic system is with no wholly defined plan to correct it beyond eliminating everything "socialists," "progressives" and "libertarians" have imposed upon it. (The quotation marks are Lewis', as though he were being dismissive of such people.) These are not economic laws, the way that I would expect laws of any system to be presented, but the author's assertions of what is wrong and what he think should be right.
For the last time, I will say that Lewis is not inherently wrong in either his criticisms or his desires to move to a free price economy. I'm just concerned that he is biased in those criticisms, which lowers the threshold at which I can take him credibly, and that he has not offered a true plan by which to reach that free price economy without causing severe harm. I would very much welcome him following up with a step-by-step guide by which we can move in that direction.
For those of you who have read this entire review, my thanks for bearing with me. I welcome any and all constructive criticism. Thank you.
When I picked up this book from my local library, I thought -- especially as touted on the back cover -- it would be a layman's primer on economics. However, the more I read, the more I realized the book serves as Hunter Lewis' (admittedly, well-deserved) indictment of Keynesian economics. During the book's early pages, I also began to feel that Lewis was also being critical of Democratic economic policy, including and up to (as the book was written just this year) the Obama administration as well as Clinton and Sanders candidacies. I lean Democrat, but I have no problem with such critiques (I have made them myself) and decided to give Lewis a chance, reading every word of all three of his lessons and 100 laws.
I do not necessarily disagree with Lewis' primary theme here: free prices (free of control and manipulation) should, indeed, "discover and inform," as he puts it, all parties in the economy of what is going on in an honest manner. What bothered me as I continued to read was that I didn't see how to get from where we are now to where Lewis would like us to be. In other words, if we accept that the way things are now is poor, even harmful economic policy, I kept waiting to see a step-by-step plan in how to reach a true free price market economy without massive (albeit, likely short-term) harm to those Lewis' professes such an economy would benefit: the poor and middle class.
The closest I got to thinking he was offering a plan was "Law 90: Corollary D of Law of Banking: Reform (Banking can be put on a more solid foundation most obviously by eliminating fractional reserve banking." In this law, Lewis says we must 1) eliminate fractional reserve banking (in other words, begin requiring banks to have 100 percent lending reserves), 2) abolish the Fed and, 3) "reform a world monetary system currently run by central banks." Mind you, this is only one part of a much more complex topic, but an important one since it's about the only place where I begin to see him putting a plan together.
Again, however, what he doesn't do is provide a way to enact these changes in any way that isn't massively disruptive. How long do we wait to abolish the Fed after eliminating fractional reserve banking? What effect will eliminating that form of banking have on the system before we reach Lewis' goal? How should we go about reforming the world monetary system in a way that doesn't throw the world into financial chaos?
I'm not saying Lewis is wrong; I am saying he doesn't go far enough in explaining the how of getting us from here to there.
Also, Lewis is not objective, as I expected an author of an economic primer to be. As I stated, he comes across as critical of Democratic policies, repeatedly calling out Presidents Obama, Clinton, Hoover (who was actually Republican, but Lewis doesn't treat him as such, I suppose because of the way the parties stood at the time) and FDR, as well as recent candidates Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders. In contrast, he only directly names President Reagan once, for linking government Social Security payments to inflation indexes; President George W. Bush once, for stating he was "abandoning free market principles to save the free market system" (which Lewis felt had to have come from a former Goldman Sachs CEO out to save his firm); and -- not even by name -- President Richard Nixon's 1971 decision to eliminate the direct international convertibility of the United States dollar to gold (a/k/a the gold standard).
Let me go back to Reagan for a moment, for one of the more contradictory of Lewis' laws, "No. 52: Corollary of Law of Economic Equality and Inequality: The 'Trickle Down' Fallacy (We need not fear that the success of the rich will impoverish the poor)." Oddly, Lewis makes no mention of Reagan here, despite being one of the biggest proponents of trickle down economics. Yet, Lewis criticizes the trickle down policy, calling it a "fable." Then take the very next law, "No. 53: Corollary of Law of Economic Equality and Inequality: Wealth Taxes (If you want to help the poor or middle class, do not tax wealth)." And, no, I'm not mixing up wealth with money, as Lewis correctly points out are not the same thing. Here, Lewis posits (and I'm paraphrasing here) that taxing wealth will keep the rich from either reinvesting or giving to charity. This would be bad, he says, because it would "impoverish everyone" rather than "to improve the lives who have the least." But he never quite gets to explaining how this would hurt individual members of the poor or middle class. Still, if not taxing the wealthy helps the impoverished somehow, isn't that trickle-down economics? (Again, my apologies if my lack of understanding is muddling things here; I just thought it was odd.)
Once again, I am not saying Lewis is inherently wrong in his criticisms, but I find it curious that there is a lack of any real focus on Republican economic foibles (especially since his call against crony capitalism should, inevitably, include lawmakers from both sides of the aisle) and makes no attempt to review President Trump's proposals. Unfortunately, while I do know the book was published this year (2017), the book's front matter only lists the year, not the month of publication. Perhaps not enough time had passed for Lewis to undertake a reasonable review. I find this unlikely, though, since he brings up Hillary Clinton and Sanders often.
Needless to say, this book wasn't what I hoped it would be or even the book I thought it could be once I started reading. These are not three economic lessons for lay people, but a damning treatise about how terrible the economic system is with no wholly defined plan to correct it beyond eliminating everything "socialists," "progressives" and "libertarians" have imposed upon it. (The quotation marks are Lewis', as though he were being dismissive of such people.) These are not economic laws, the way that I would expect laws of any system to be presented, but the author's assertions of what is wrong and what he think should be right.
For the last time, I will say that Lewis is not inherently wrong in either his criticisms or his desires to move to a free price economy. I'm just concerned that he is biased in those criticisms, which lowers the threshold at which I can take him credibly, and that he has not offered a true plan by which to reach that free price economy without causing severe harm. I would very much welcome him following up with a step-by-step guide by which we can move in that direction.
For those of you who have read this entire review, my thanks for bearing with me. I welcome any and all constructive criticism. Thank you.
February 14, 2022
3.5 Stars
I thought that the three lessons were stronger than the 100 economic laws. Those who enjoy reading about the Austrian and Chicago view on Economics would enjoy this work, and many notably figures from them are mentioned in the book. Those who agree with Keynes would have a problem with his fundamental arguments (including the part of Keynes that he cites from his early days which are different than his later theory).
It is a relatively easy introduction to the topic and brings out major figures for those who prefer a more hands off governmental approach to economics.
I thought that the three lessons were stronger than the 100 economic laws. Those who enjoy reading about the Austrian and Chicago view on Economics would enjoy this work, and many notably figures from them are mentioned in the book. Those who agree with Keynes would have a problem with his fundamental arguments (including the part of Keynes that he cites from his early days which are different than his later theory).
It is a relatively easy introduction to the topic and brings out major figures for those who prefer a more hands off governmental approach to economics.
September 26, 2020
Good book, or shall I say good books. This is two books in one. I like Hunter Lewis's style and clear writing. Sadly I've read so much Austrian Economics I didn't find much new information but I did enjoy it. Because I've read so much other Austrian work I can't evaluate how useful this would be to someone new to the economics.
July 9, 2019
Taught useful laws regarding economics, opened me up to new ideas and gave me some insights regarding current economic situation. However, was slightly biased and at times a bit hard to grasp concepts.
October 27, 2021
This book has taught me the true difference between capitalism v crony capitalism; and (Accidentally) showed me the reality that having true capitalism is almost as impossible as the true socialism that left-wing people talk about.
Nevertheless, the way this book argues in favour of capitalism is extremely simple and could recommend it to almost anyone.
Nevertheless, the way this book argues in favour of capitalism is extremely simple and could recommend it to almost anyone.
October 26, 2018
Essentially Hazlitt's magnum opus on steroids.
The second work is 20 solid "laws" with 80 corollaries.
Terse enough to have no filler and leaves nothing to be desired.
Loved it!
The second work is 20 solid "laws" with 80 corollaries.
Terse enough to have no filler and leaves nothing to be desired.
Loved it!
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews