by
Benoîte Taffin
Ladies and gentlemen, dear mister de Guenin,
Thank you for inviting me at this congress. I am proud and honoured to be here among all these outstanding personalities and I am grateful you gave me such an opportunity to know more about F. Bastiat that I admired without realizing what an important role he played in my civic engagement. As the president of Contribuables Associés, the French taxpayers Union, I feel totally in accordance with F. Bastiat as well with his deep convictions as an economist than with the way he was an activist.
I dare say that F. Bastiat would have appreciated what we do at Contribuables Associés. He would have been not only a member of our association but its president! He would have been a much better president than I am, and our action would be much more efficient and successful than it is, even if we are proud of what has be done up to now.
In fact, the very nature of his fight is our fight. The implementation of his convictions is our justification.
I cannot help reading a few quotations from one of his writings when he was a candidate to parliament in 1846, "the profession of faith to the electors of Saint Sever". May be it is because I have been myself candidate and elected that this text specially appeals to me. It is the most beautiful and luminous and courageous profession of faith I ever read.
«There are things that can only be done by collective force or established authority, and others that should be left to private activity.
«For my part, I believe that when power has guaranteed to each and everyone the free use and the product of his or her faculties, repressed any possible misuse, maintained order, secured national independence and carried out certain tasks in the public interest which are beyond the power of the individual, then it has fulfilled just about all its duty.
«Beyond this sphere, religion, education, association, work, exchanges, everything belongs to the field of private activity, under control of public authority, whose role should only be one of supervision and of repression.
«If that great and fundamental boundary were thus established, then authority would be strong, and it would be appreciated, because it would only have a tutelary action.
«It would be inexpensive, because it would be confined within the narrowest limits.»
And he further adds:
«And I beg you to note, gentlemen, that authority becomes all the more costly as it becomes oppressive. For it can commit no usurpation otherwise than through paid agents. Thus each of its intrusions implies creating some new administration, instituting some new tax; so that our freedom and our purse unavoidably share a common destiny.»
Everything important for Contribuables Associés is told in those few words.
The fight against the tendency for governments to expand and spend is the very reason of our action.
But what is for me especially remarkable is that F. Bastiat was an activist as well as an author. How he fought for the success of his ideas showed us the way, one and a half century latter, even if we were not conscious of it. I have especially in mind his action for freedom of exchanges with Richard Cobden. In 1846 he organized the French Free Trade Association in Bordeaux before moving to Paris where he organized the free trade campaign on a national scale. He had no rest getting a large popular support and in order to put pressure on government: pamphlets, articles in newspapers, meetings, petitions to politicians and fund raising to be able to keep going. A conviction has to be shared by the greatest possible number of supporters to have a chance to become reality. It's what we try to do.
I think it is now time to present you shortly Contribuables Associés and how it started.
At the end of the seventies, powerful popular lobbies were born in U.S. to defend not only taxpayers as individuals but to represent them towards the Parliament and the medias. It has been a revolution. Up to that time, there only existed lobbies asking for more public funds or lobbies with moral aims Taxpayers unions were a new type of pressure group.
Their justification is based on the fact that with the time politicians forgot that they had been originally elected to represent taxpayers: how, to what extent and at what cost they mean to have things managed is the responsibility of citizens. It is the object of the 15th Article of the French Bill of Rights of 1789. A free individual must have the freedom to dispose of the product he creates. Public expense must be an exception and based on a real necessity. It is because politicians have lost this control that taxpayers union are necessary.
In France, at he end of the eighties, 4 men decided to imitate Americans and to start Contribuables Associés after the model of N.T.U. (National Taxpayers Union), using the weapon of direct mail. You know them I am sure, at least Alain Dumait, Bernard Zimmern, François Laarman. Success came fast: 50 000 members after 3 years. Today we have 150 000 members and the contributions provides us a 25 millions francs budget every year.
Thanks to our letters (3 millions last year) and our actions towards newspapers, French people know us, politicians too.
We point out all kind of scandalous wastes at every level of public intervention: city, districts, province or State. Newspapers love that!
We started 2 years ago to celebrate "the tax freedom day", the day when people stop working for public expenses and start, on the average of course, working for them. In France, it will be next Monday, the 9th of July. We are the champions of developed countries! For countries members of O.E.C.D. the Tax Freedom Day is on the 21st of May!
Of course our action has not been efficient enough up to now. After more than 10 years, public expenses go on rising. But more and more people are conscious that tax burden is not a fate, that more freedom means more prosperity. And even if politicians don't act yet they cannot avoid the subject. It will be a long fight. I am ready to go on and the example of other countries especially around us, in Europe (Spain, Germany Italy) gives me hope.
Last year, for our national meetings (attended by more than 3000 people) we presented a Chart for good management of public finance:
This Chart has been recently sent to French representative. We ask them to sign it and we expect they apply it! A few of them already signed. It's almost a surprise!
Thanks again for giving me the opportunity to talk here today. I know I have many friends among French liberal economists, but I am not sure they all understand our work and some intellectuals look upon our business, our money making machine with a little condescendence. I am sure, Mister President that your action to get F.B. to be better known and appreciated as a tremendous economist but also as an activist will sustain our fight which should be shared by every responsible citizen proud of his country.