His father, Pierre, worked with the family banking and export firm, which did business in Spain and Portugal. Bayonne was a quiet medieval town, a political backwater. Bastiat then applies the argument to a host of other examples and explains how things like subsidies for the arts, trade restrictions, and prodigality don’t actually make societies richer while things like disbanding the army, middlemen, machines, and thrift don’t make societies poorer. Claude Frederic Bastiat was born on June 30, 1801, in Bayonne, a seaport in the department of Landes in southwestern France. He has made it poorer to the tune of one window. The window-smasher hasn’t made the world any richer. Claude Frédéric Bastiat (29 June 1801 24 December 1850) was a French classical liberal theorist, political economist, and member of the French assembly. The lesson is simple-and again, it’s at the root of Hazlitt’s Economics on One Lesson-the kid who breaks Jacques Bonhomme’s window isn’t stimulating the economy because Jacques could have used the money he spent replacing the window on literally anything else. The Creator of life has entrusted us with the responsibility of preserving, developing, and perfecting it. This gift is life - physical, intellectual, and moral life.

If you’ve ever heard anyone say that war is good for the economy or that a natural disaster is to be welcomed because it will stimulate gross domestic product, this essay explains why that’s wrong. We hold from God the gift which includes all others. However, Frdrics mother died in 1808, while his father followed her in death two. If You’ve ever heard anyone invoke something called “the broken window fallacy,” this is where it started. Bastiats father and uncle ran a successful export business in Bayonne.

Frederic bastiat