Some freebies above.
Yesterday marked the 214th anniversary of Frédéric
Bastiat’s birthday on June 30, 1801, in Bayonne, France. One of the
seminal thinkers of the classical liberal tradition, Bastiat made great
contributions to the field of political economy, laying many of the
foundations for the later school of Austrian economics. Both a
politician and a writer, Bastiat penned numerous books and essays on
political economy and how its principles could be applied to mid-19th
century France, writing with his razor-sharp wit and renowned
rhetorical flair. While his works pertain to post-Napoleonic France,
they carry important lessons for our nation’s leaders, politicians, and
economists.
One of Bastiat’s most important lessons appears in
That Which is Seen, and That Which is Not Seen,
where Bastiat applied his careful method of logical procession to
economic questions. In this work, he examines the same topics that are
commonly misunderstood by contemporary politicians: military spending,
taxes, the economic benefits of saving, and mechanization, among others.
In each examination, he demonstrates that the economist or policy maker
must look beyond the apparent to understand the true effects of a
policy, showing in every case that the arguments for government
intervention are inherently flawed. If one were to apply this method to
the argument for raising the minimum wage to $15, for example, one would
see that the unseen effects, the firing of low-skill workers and
increased prices, are damaging. It is this logical method that informed
many in the Austrian school of thought and formed the foundation of
Henry Hazlitt’s seminal
Economics in One Lesson, which is a more thorough investigation of Bastiat’s principle.
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