"Frederick Bastiat - That Which Is Seen-That Which Is Not" - читать интересную книгу автора (Bastiat Frederick)

It displaces enjoyments, it transposes wages -that is all.

Will it be said that for one kind of gratification, and one
kind of labour, it substitutes more urgent, more moral, more
reasonable gratifications and labour? I might dispute this; I might
say, by taking 60,000 francs from the tax-payers, you diminish tile
wages of labourers, drainers, carpenters, blacksmiths, and increase in
proportion those of the singers.

There is nothing to prove that this latter class calls for more
sympathy than the former. M. Lamartine does not say that it is so.
He himself says, that the labour of the theatres is as fertile, as
productive as any other (not more so); and this may be doubted; for
the best proof that the latter is not so fertile as the former lies in
this, that the other is to be called upon to assist it.

But this comparison between the value and the intrinsic merit
of different kinds of labour, forms no part of my present subject. All
I have to do here is to show, that if M. Lamartine and those persons
who commend his line of argument have seen on one side the salaries
gained by the providers of the comedians, they ought on the other to
have seen the salaries lost by the providers of the taxpayers; for
want of this, they have exposed themselves to ridicule by mistaking
a displacement for a gain. If they were true to their doctrine,
there would be no limits to their demands for Government aid; for that
which is true of one franc and of 60,000 is true, under parallel
circumstances, of a hundred millions of francs.

When taxes are the subject of discussion, Gentlemen, you
ought to prove their utility by reasons from the root of the matter,
but not by this unlucky assertion -"The public expenses support the
working classes." This assertion disguises the important fact, that
public expenses always supersede private expenses, and that
therefore we bring a livelihood to one workman instead of another, but
add nothing to the share of the working class as a whole. Your
arguments are fashionable enough, but they are too absurd to be
justified by anything like reason.

V. -PUBLIC WORKS

Nothing is more natural than that a nation, after having
assured itself that an enterprise will benefit the community, should
have it executed by means of a general assessment. But I lose
patience, I confess, when I hear this economic blunder advanced in
support of such a project. "Besides, it will be a means of creating
labour for the workmen."

The State opens a road, builds a palace, straightens a
street, cuts a canal; and so gives work to certain workmen -this is
what is seen: but it deprives certain other workmen of work, and