| Story Views | |
| Now: | |
| Last Hour: | |
| Last 24 Hours: | |
| Total: | |
Quotation of the Day…
(Don Boudreaux)
… is from page 178 of Liberty Fund’s forthcoming new and expanded English-language edition, expertly edited by David Hart, of Frédéric Bastiat’s ingenious Economic Sophisms and “What Is Seen and What Is Not Seen”; specifically, this passage is from the new translation of Bastiat’s January 1846 essay “Theft by Subsidy” (“Le vol à la prime”) (original emphasis):
It is truly miraculous that the following proposition continues to be held as proven: Anything that an individual steals from the whole is a general profit. Perpetual motion, the philosopher’s stone, or the squaring of the circle have fallen into oblivion, but the theory of Advancement through theft is still in fashion.
DBx: A perfect monument, in the United States, to the prevalent superstition that the people of a country grow richer whenever their government seizes what belongs to many of them and gives the booty to some of them is that great geyser of cronyism, the U.S. Export-Import Bank.
This mercantilist superstition holds that Americans at large are enriched when – after they refuse voluntarily to underwrite as many loans to buyers of American exports as U.S. government officials, by some sorcery, divine that they should underwrite – force Americans to underwrite more such loans. Voila! Americans are enriched! And how do we know? Why, look! Boeing and a few other American corporations are exporting more! What could be plainer? And surely no one but a pin-headed laissez-faire ideologue doubts that the resources used to produce these additional exports would, without the Ex-Im Bank’s vision and munificence, have been used less productively – indeed, would likely have lain idle.
Source: http://cafehayek.com/2017/03/quotation-of-the-day-2028.html
