Frederic Bastiat Quotes
Man acquires wealth in proportion as he puts his labor to better account.
Bastiat, Frédéric. Economic Harmonies. Translated by W. Hayden Boyers, Foundation for Economic Education, 1996.
This used to be a generally accepted principle in America. It took labor to produce wealth. It could be someone else’s labor or even slave labor, but labor produced things or labor enabled us to find minerals like gold or oil. However, in modern capitalism, money itself can produce wealth by investing or yielding interest. Inventions produce wealth as do other ideas. Authors and movie producers produce wealth. Who you know can produce wealth (finder’s fees) as can knowledge.
The economy was terrific under the Republicans and it is always hard to run against a successful economy. However, the lack of meaningful regulation and corporate and financial dominance caused the economy to come crashing down in 1929. See Hoover’s description {603859},
Claude-Frédéric Bastiat was a French economist, writer and a prominent member of the French Liberal School.
