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You cannot get rich by picking your own pocket
From Frédéric Bastiat’s January 1846 essay “Theft by Subsidy”…
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.
This seems obvious, doesn’t it? When the government takes your tax dollars and redistributes them in the form of food stamps, Obamacare subsidies and government housing, you perfectly understand that what is given isn’t free but is paid for by your sweat and industry.
Yet people forget this when it comes to trade protectionism. In the case of tariffs, the government taxes your purchase of, say, a pineapple so that domestic producers of pineapples can charge higher prices. In this way the government picks our pockets twice: First it picks the pocket of those who buy imported pineapples and second it picks the pocket of those who buy domestic pineapples by artificially inflating the price of pineapples.
Many of those who decry the subsidization of food, health care and housing for the poor believe that subsidizing Hawaiian pineapple growers represents a general profit and economic benefit. In actuality, it is just a form of theft from the many to benefit the few.
Some will argue that the Mexican government subsidizes Mexican pineapple growers and this harms America. In actuality, when the Mexican government pays a portion of the cost of pineapples consumed by Americans, it is a direct transfer of Mexican wealth to American consumers and is, in fact, a profit for US pineapple growers. It is, likewise, a net loss for the people of Mexico. Foreign subsidization of American consumer goods is something to be desired, not suppressed.
The idea that a people grow richer when the government picks the pocket of the many to benefit the few is pure hokum and will never, ever result in making America great again. Quite the opposite.
Source: http://therealrevo.com/blog/?p=158315
