Economic sophisms and, "what is seen and what is not seen" / Frédéric Bastiat ; Jacques de Guenin, General Editor ; translated from the French by Jane Willems and Michel Willems ; with a foreword by Robert McTeer ; and an introduction and appendixes by Academic Editor David M. Hart.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Bastiat, Frédéric, 1801-1850, author.

Contributor:

Guenin, Jacques de, editor.

Standardized Title:

Works. Selections. English. 2016

Language:

English

French

Subjects (All):

Free trade.

Free enterprise.

Protectionism.

Economics.

Physical Description:

lxxxii, 640 pages ; 23 cm

Place of Publication:

Carmel, Indiana : Liberty Fund, Inc., [2016]

Summary:

This volume, the third in our Collected Works of Frédéric Bastiat, includes two of Bastiat's best-known works, the collected Economic Sophisms and the pamphlet What Is Seen and What Is Not Seen, We are publishing here for the first time in English the Third Series of Economic Sophisms which Bastiat had planned but died before he could complete the project. Both Economic Sophisms and What Is Seen and What Is Not Seen share similar stylistic features and were written with much the same purpose in mind, to disabuse people of misperceptions they might have had about the benefits of free trade and free markets. Throughout the book, Bastiat's clever and witty arguments against tariff protection and subsidies to domestic industry are time-less, as governments and vested-interest groups are still advocating the same policies 160 years after Bastiat wrote. Frédéric Bastiat was born in 1801, and during his short life the died in Rome, on Christmas Eve, in 1850) he was witness to many historic events, such as the victory of Richard Cobden's tree-trade Anti-Corn Law League in 1846, the rise of socialism, the 1848 Revolution, and the rise of Louis Napoleon to the presidency of the Second Republic. Many of these events affected his ideas and became targets of his writings. In his final work, What Is Seen and What Is Not Seen, completed only months before his death, he provides one of his keenest economic insights, that, although there are obvious beneficial effects of government interventions at first, that is, the "seen," there are also the "unseen" consequences, for example, in the form of opportunity costs that are ignored but that often have deleterious economic effects. He makes this case most eloquently in the form of a parable in the opening chapter, "The Broken Window." To accompany Bastiat's original works, we have provided detailed and comprehensive explanatory footnotes, glossaries, and appendixes. Bastiat refers to dozens of other writers and politicians and is critical of French government policies regarding taxation, tariffs, and subsidies to business. The glossary of authors and politicians provides detailed information about the individuals Bastiat mentions in his essays, the views they held, the books they published, and the laws that the French state enacted in order to maintain the system of protection and subsidies that Bastiat and the other free-market economists so strenuously opposed. This collection of supplementary material allows us a better understanding of the community of economists and politicians of which Bastiat was a part in the late 1840s. Book jacket.

Contents:

Economic Sophisms 1

Economic Sophisms First Series 3

[Author's Introduction] 3

1 Abundance and Scarcity 7

2 Obstacle and Cause 15

3 Effort and Result 18

4 Equalizing the Conditions of Production 25

5 Our Products Are Weighed Down with Taxes 39

6 The Balance of Trade 44

7 Petition by the Manufacturers of Candles, Etc. 49

8 Differential Duties 53

9 An Immense Discovery!!! 54

10 Reciprocity 57

11 Nominal Prices 61

12 Does Protection Increase the Rate of Pay? 64

13 Theory and Practice 69

14 A Conflict of Principles 75

15 More Reciprocity 78

16 Blocked Rivers Pleading in Favor of the Prohibitionists 80

17 A Negative Railway 81

18 There Are No Absolute Principles 83

19 National Independence 85

20 Human Labor and Domestic Labor 88

21 Raw Materials 92

22 Metaphors 100

Conclusion 104

Economic Sophisms Second Series 111

1 The Physiology of Plunder 113

2 Two Moral Philosophies 131

3 The Two Axes 138

4 The Lower Council of Labor 142

5 High Prices and Low Prices 146

6 To Artisans and Workers 155

7 A Chinese Tale 163

8 Post Hoc, Ergo Propter Hoc 168

9 Theft by Subsidy 170

10 The Tax Collector 179

11 The Utopian 187

12 Salt, the Mail, and the Customs Service 198

13 Protection, or the Three Municipal Magistrates 214

14 Something Else 226

15 The Free Trader's Little Arsenal 234

16 The Right Hand and the Left Hand 240

17 Domination through Work 248

Economic Sophisms "Third Series," 255

1 Recipes for Protectionism 257

2 Two Principles 261

3 M. Cunin-Gridaine's Logic 268

4 One Profit versus Two Losses 271

5 On Moderation 277

6 The People and the Bourgeoisie 281

7 Two Losses versus One Profit 287

8 The Political Economy of the Generals 293

9 A Protest 296

10 The Spanish Association for the Defense of National Employment and the Bidassoa Bridge 299

11 The Specialists 305

12 The Man Who Asked Embarrassing Questions 309

13 The Fear of a Word 318

14 Anglomania, Anglophobia 327

15 One Man's Gain Is Another Man's Loss 341

16 Making a Mountain Out of a Molehill 343

17 A Little Manual for Consumers; in Other Words, for Everyone 350

18 The Mayor of Enios 355

19 Antediluvian Sugar 365

20 Monita Secreta: The Secret Book of Instructions 371

21 The Immediate Relief of the People 377

22 A Disastrous Remedy 379

23 Circulars from a Government That Is Nowhere to Be Found 380

24 Disastrous Illusions 384

What Is Seen and What Is Not Seen, or Political Economy in One Lesson 401

[The Author's Introduction] 403

1 The Broken Window 405

2 Dismissing Members of the Armed Forces 407

3 Taxes 410

4 Theaters and the Fine Arts 413

5 Public Works 419

6 The Middlemen 422

7 Trade Restrictions 427

8 Machines 432

9 Credit 437

10 Algeria 439

11 Thrift and Luxury 443

11 The Right to Work and the Right to Profit 449.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Contains:

Bastiat, Frédéric, 1801-1850. Sophismes économiques. English

Bastiat, Frédéric, 1801-1850. Ce qu'on voit et ce qu'on ne voit pas. English

Economic sophisms.

What is seen and what is not seen.

Other Format:

Online version: Bastiat, Frédéric, 1801-1850, author. Economic sophisms ; and, What is seen and what is not seen.

ISBN:

9780865978874

0865978875

9780865978881

0865978883

OCLC:

949553148