France

Nicolas Oresme considered that money did not belong to the Prince but to the “community of merchants”. Jean-Baptiste Say considered that money is neutral in the functioning of the economy. Émeric Crucé wrote about the benefits for trade of European countries adopting a common unit of currency, joined later by Victor Hugo who called for a “continental currency”. Jacques Rueff was convinced that: “Europe will be created by means of a single currency or not at all”. Jean Bodin considered that there is no wealth or strength except in men. Writing when agriculture was the main economic activity, François Quesnay concluded that poor peasants, poor kingdom. While poverty is the backdrop to the works of many writers such as Voltaire, Balzac, Zola, and Céline, French economist Esther Duflo gave poverty pride of place in her research, awarded the 2019 Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences for her experimental approach to alleviating global poverty. Antoine de Saint Exupéry urged a change of mindset, with the realisation: “We do not inherit the earth from our parents, we borrow it from our children”. Francis I and Jules Verne grasped where the economy was heading, succeeding where economists have systematically failed. Many opposing views on international trade have been propounded, from Antoine de Montchrestien to Colbert and Montesquieu, from Flaubert and Balzac to Jules Verne. Montesquieu, Tocqueville, Frédéric Bastiat, Paul Leroy-Beaulieu, and Léon Walras have all demonstrated that competition is essential to the functioning of a market economy. In Panurge, Rabelais praises private credit for cementing society and the universe, preventing them from careening out of control. Turgot warned Louis XVI there must be no national bankruptcy, no increase in taxes, and no new loans. The Controller-General of Finance made the case for liberalism. Nobel prize winner Gérard Debreu was of the same view, stating: “The superiority of liberalism has been demonstrated mathematically”. Victor Hugo lambasted communism. Jean-Baptiste Colbert teaches us that the art of taxation is to pluck the taxpayer with the smallest possible amount of hissing, while Vauban and Jean-Baptiste Say explain why the lighter the tax, the greater the tax receipts. Talleyrand, France’s greatest diplomat and financier, shares pearls of wisdom on rising to power, daring to act, know-how, time, confidentiality, team spirit, and corruption. Charles Gide defends automation. Charles de Gaulle explains the French passion for equality with a quip.