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

you look towards the village of A., you will judge very differently;
for, unless you are very blind indeed, you will see that that
village has lost a worker, and the thousand francs which would
remunerate his labour, as well as the activity which, by the
expenditure of those thousand francs, it would spread around it.

At first sight, there would seem to be some compensation.
What took place at the village, now takes place at Metz, that is
all. But the loss is to be estimated in this way: -At the village, a
man dug and worked; he was a worker. At Metz, he turns to the right
about, and to the left about; he is a soldier. The money and the
circulation are the same in both cases; but in the one there were
three hundred days of productive labour; in the other, there are three
hundred days of unproductive labour, supposing, of course, that a part
of the army is not indispensable to the public safety.

Now, suppose the disbanding to take place. You tell me there
will be a surplus of a hundred thousand workers, that competition will
be stimulated, and it will reduce the rate of wages. This is what
you see.

But what you do not see is this. You do not see that to dismiss
a hundred thousand soldiers is not to do away with a million of money,
but to return it to the tax-payers. You do not see that to throw a
hundred thousand workers on the market, is to throw into it, at the
same moment, the hundred millions of money needed to pay for their
labour; that, consequently, the same act which increases the supply of
hands, increases also the demand; from which it follows, that your
fear of a reduction of wages is unfounded. You do not see that, before
the disbanding as well as after it, there are in the country a hundred
millions of money corresponding with the hundred thousand men. That
the whole difference consists in this: before the disbanding, the
country gave the hundred millions to the hundred thousand men for
doing nothing; and that after it, it pays them the same sum for
working. You do not see, in short, that when a tax-payer gives his
money either to a soldier in exchange for nothing, or to a worker in
exchange for something, all the ultimate consequences of the
circulation of this money are the same in the two cases; only, in
the second case, the tax-payer receives something, in the former he
receives nothing. The result is -a dead loss to the nation.

The sophism which I am here combating will not stand the test
of progression, which is the touchstone of principles. If, when
every compensation is made, and all interests are-satisfied, there
is a national profit in increasing the army, why not enroll under
its banners the entire male population of the country?

TAXES
III. -TAXES.