Claude Frederic Bastiat

Though this was written over 150 years ago it is quit fitting for today’s politics.
I think it’s worth listening to, its one hour and twenty minutes or it can be read from the link below.

CLAUDE FREDERIC BASTIAT 1801-1850

Was a French economist, legislator, and writer who championed private property, free markets, and limited government. Perhaps the main underlying theme of Bastiat's writings was that the free market was inherently a source of "economic harmony" among individuals, as long as government was restricted to the function of protecting the lives, liberties, and property of citizens from theft or aggression. To Bastiat, governmental coercion was only legitimate if it served "to guarantee security of person, liberty, and property rights, to cause justice to reign over all.”

Governmental Plunder

While establishing the inherent harmony of voluntary trade, Bastiat also explained how governmental resource allocation is necessarily antagonistic and destructive of the free market s natural harmony. Since government produces no wealth of its own, it must necessarily take from some to give to others robbing Peter to pay Paul is the essence of government, as Bastiat described it. Moreover, as special-interest groups seek more and more of other peoples money through the aegis of the state, they undermine the productive capacities of the free market by engaging in politics rather than in productive behavior. "The state," wrote Bastiat, "is the great fictitious entity by which everyone seeks to live at the expense of everyone else


To read more about Frederick Bastiat

The Law by Frederick Bastiat HTML fist published in 1850 this is an English translation from the original French.

Or listen to The Law mp3 read by G. Edward Griffin