Really, it’s not every day a quote from a dead French economist is cited here in Canada to encourage municipal politicians to hold the line on public sector wages.
The letter from Jim Rodgers (Blenheim) begins as follows:
“With the annual municipal budgets upon us and the usual demands for higher wages, I am reminded of the saying of the 19th-century French economist Frederic Bastiat...”
Wait. Stop the movie for a sec. I’ve got to catch my breath. A man from Blenheim realizes budgetary matters are being discussed in his region and a saying from a long dead economist enters his mind.
Yipes. My education has been sadly neglected.
But not today. I’m going to Google this one! Back in a minute.
... (Hum the Jeopardy theme song while waiting)
I’m back with good news. Information about Bastiat is plentiful.
This from Biography of Frederic Bastiat (1801-1850) by Thomas J. DiLorenzo:
CLAUDE FREDERIC BASTIAT was a French economist, legislator, and writer who championed private property, free markets, and limited government.
After twenty years of intense intellectual preparation, articles began to pour out of Bastiat, and soon took the form of his first book, Economic Sophisms, which to this day is still arguably the best literary defense of free trade available.
While Bastiat was shaping economic opinion in France, Karl Marx was writing Das Kapital, and the socialist notion of "class conflict" that the economic gains of capitalists necessarily came at the expense of workers was gaining in popularity.
Bastiat's Economic Harmonies explained why the opposite is true, that the interests of mankind are essentially harmonious if they can be cultivated in a free society where government confines its responsibilities to suppressing thieves, murderers, and special-interest groups who seek to use the state as a means of plundering their fellow citizens.
In other words, some things change and other things stay the same.
Many governments today support free markets and free trade but have stiff competition from major corporations - some of the most powerful of special-interest groups - when it comes to plundering citizens.
So, I’m surprised that Mr. Rodgers doesn’t make any mention of the private sector or corporate budgets and CEO wages.
For example: When he quotes Bastiat’s reasonings, i.e., “when plunder becomes a way of life for a group of men living together in society, they create for themselves in the course of time a legal system that authorizes it and a moral code that justifies it...” how is it that the private sector didn’t come to mind?
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A bias against the public sector and for the private sector has existed for many years in some quarters.
A balanced approach is more important, in my opinion.
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