Henry Hazlitt
When evaluating economic policies, focusing only on the immediate benefits for a single group often hides the devastating long-term costs that everyone else is forced to pay.
Destruction never creates real wealth because the money spent on repairing damages is money that could have been used to create new value.
Government spending and public works programs merely divert capital and jobs away from the private sector instead of creating new economic activity.
Taxes discourage private production by forcing businesses and individuals to shoulder all the risks while stripping away the rewards of their labor.