Liberté, égalité, fraternité - French for "liberty, equality, fraternity." “We are a continent of refugees, and if you say we can’t integrate refugees, that’s not consistent with our values, even if borders cannot be wide open,” says the new French president Mr Macron in 2017.

"While the French people have been in advance of all other nations in the conquest of their rights, or rather of their political guarantees, they have nonetheless remained the most governed, regimented, administered, imposed upon, shackled, and exploited of all..." says Frédéric Bastiat (1801-1850) a leading French economist and politician. Written more than a 100 years ago, liittle has changed in that regard with the French economy.

France is a statist-run socialist economy that is massively overtaxed and overregulated. France's public government sector, for instance, accounts for more than 50 percent of GDP. With public expenditures at 56.5% of GDP in 2016, France has remained the country with the highest levels of government expenditures between 2007 and 2016. Higher than any other European nation. The.French socialist-statist political system has been in power for decades and the state has substantial centralized control.

The American economist Milton Friedman summed it up best. He declared that the French economy was a mystery to him: “The French government gets everything wrong, and still the country is working.”

The French economist Frédéric Bastiat would be the equivalent of the British economist Adam Smith, whom Britain reveres and which capitalism is founded one. While the French revere Voltaire as the French thinker of Enlightenment, they have totally ignored Bastiat's views on the economy.

Joseph Schumpeter described Bastiat nearly a century after his death as “the most brilliant economic journalist who ever lived.” The economist Joseph Schumpeter was perhaps the most powerful thinker ever on innovation, entrepreneurship, and capitalism and coined the term "creative destruction."

As an example of "creative destruction", one of the main items that has constantly changed over time is the American S&P500 index. About 50 percent of the S&P 500 index will be replaced over the next 10 years. It is an index of the 500 largest American companies with market capitalizations of at least $6 billion. It is seen as a leading indicator of U.S. equities and a reflection of the performance of the economy. Contrast America with France. The CAC 40 (Cotation Assistée en Continu) Index is a French stock market index that tracks the 40 largest French stocks. The CAC 40 is also market-capitalization weighted. It is an economic barometer of the French economy.

Mergers aside, the youngest firm in the CAC 40, was founded in 1967.

Bastiat wrote a series of articles for Journal des economistes, attacking the fallacies of protectionism. Bastiat viewed everything from the standpoint of consumers. One thing is for certain -- with rare exceptions, government involvement with an industry will not be positive for the companies that are impacted. Bastiat said that protectionism hurts consumers and retards the very enterprise the government wants to promote.