Although he died at the young age of 49, French journalist and politician Frédéric Bastiat wrote dozens of pieces and thoroughly demolished the economic fallacies that were in vogue in his country over 150 years ago. Some of these, like his Petition from the candle makers, are worth more than the hundreds of treatises that have been written on trade policies as an efficient and clear demonstration of the absurdity of protectionism.
Bastiat wrote a series of texts that use biting irony to attack the economic sophistry in vogue in his country toward the middle of the 19th century. Unfortunately, this same sophistry continues to feed public policy debate even today!
