All Posts Tagged With: "Frederic Bastiat"
Taxation as Vandalism
Imagine a small town with only a few small businesses. The best, most prosperous business is the general store, which sells citizens many of their daily necessities. Just across the street is a shop that sells and installs windows. Unlike the general store, the window shop is not doing well at all. The town is [...]
20Jan2009 | Lachlan Markay | 14 comments | ContinuedThe Free Market’s Invisibility Problem
Joseph Packer is a Ph.D. student at the University of Pittsburgh School of Communication.
Advocates of liberty face an invisibility problem, first identified by nineteenth-century French libertarian Frédéric Bastiat in the appropriately titled essay “What Is Seen and What Is Not Seen.” Through a simple story, Bastiat exposed the fallacy that later underlay Keynesian economics.
A young [...]
A Government Program for All
My economics students often ask why, if the economic theory I present is correct, there is so much intervention in the economy. It reminds me of an observation made by Henry Hazlitt in Economics in One Lesson:
It is often sadly remarked that the bad economists present their errors to the public better than the good [...]
Free Trade’s Never-Ending Battle
Arthur Foulkes is a freelance writer living in Indiana.
Bastiat, did you live in vain?
I can think of few people who did more for the cause of free trade in his lifetime than Frédéric Bastiat. A nineteenth-century French lawmaker, pamphleteer, economist, and philosopher, Bastiat is well known to free-trade advocates even today. His classic satirical essay [...]
There’s Still Work to Do
Free trade is again under assault. If there is one reason for the perennial attack it is likely the one Frédéric Bastiat made so much of: the failure to look for what is “unseen.” The costs of free trade (temporary job loss, closed firms) are easily traced to the free movement of goods, services, and [...]
1Apr2004 | Sheldon Richman | 0 comments | ContinuedA Leonard Read for Africa?
A candle has been lit in east Africa. It shows promise of spreading much light where there is now much darkness. In time it may grow to illuminate an entire continent. Its appearance is a testimony to perseverance and the power of ideas, as well as a tribute to this very publication. The candle is [...]
1May2002 | Lawrence W. Reed | 0 comments | ContinuedWhat Is Seen and What Is Not Seen
This excerpt is from the first chapter of Selected Essays on Political Economy, translated by Seymour Cain and edited by George B. de Huszar, published by the Foundation for Economic Education.
In the economic sphere an act, a habit, an institution, a law produces not only one effect, but a series of effects. Of these effects, [...]
The Hidden Cost of Taxation
The costs of taxation are dispersed widely. Everyone pays taxes, so when a general tax is increased it is spread over so many people that no one individual will find the increase very burdensome. Conversely, if the tax is decreased, no one may perceive a significant benefit.
1Mar2000 | Dwight R. Lee | 0 comments | ContinuedPlunder Gets a Boost
Timothy Sandefur is a law student at Chapman University in Orange, California.
A recent legislative battle in California demonstrates once again the dangers of economic ignorance and what Frederic Bastiat called “legalized plunder.” Assembly Bill 84, fortunately vetoed by Governor Gray Davis, would have “prohibit[ed] a public agency from authorizing a project or development that includes [...]
Economics for the 21st Century
Mark Skousen (http://www.mskousen.com; mskousen@aol.com) is an economist at Rollins College, Department of Economics, Winter Park, FL 32789, a Forbes columnist, and editor of Forecasts & Strategies. His textboook, Economic Logic, is now available from FEE.
“Nature has set no limit to the realization of our hopes.”
—Marquis de Condorcet
Recently I came across the extraordinary writings of the [...]
Creating Jobs vs. Creating Wealth
Government policies are commonly evaluated in terms of how many jobs they create. Restricting imports is seen as a way to protect and create domestic jobs. Tax preferences and loopholes are commonly justified as ways of increasing employment in the favored activity. Presidents point with pride to the number of jobs created in the economy [...]
1Jan2000 | Dwight R. Lee | 5 comments | ContinuedBetween Power and Liberty: Economics and the Law edited by Richard M. Ebeling
Hillsdale College Press • 1998 • 169 pages • $9.95 paperback
Philip Murray is an associate professor of economics at Webber College in Babson Park, Florida.
Between Power and Liberty: Economics and the Law, is the publication of the 1997 Ludwig von Mises lectures at Hillsdale College. The book’s title comes from James Madison’s description of the [...]
The Fourth Dimension
We are heading into our twenty-third deficit in the last twenty-six years. In the richest and most productive year in our history, with the most onerous taxation we have known until this decade, our federal revenue still does not equal our federal spending. That spending now runs to about $64 billion a year—20 times the [...]
20Nov2009 | Henry Hazlitt | 0 comments | ContinuedThe State
Frédéric Bastiat (1801-1850) was an economist, statesman, and author during a period when France was drifting rapidly toward socialism. His clear description of that trend and its evil consequences, written in 1849, merits serious consideration in the United States of America today.
I wish someone would offer a prize—not of a hundred francs but of [...]
Freedom In Transactions
In 1848, a French legislator tried to tell his countrymen how the God-given self-interest of each person benefits the welfare of the group
On entering Paris, which I had come to visit, I said to myself—Here are a million of human beings who would all die in a short time if provisions of every kind [...]
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The End of Prosperity: How Higher Taxes Will Doom the Economy–If We Let it Happen
By Arthur B. Laffer, Stephen Moore, and Peter J. Tanous
