Bastiat exposes numerous economic fallacies that are still widely argued today, that automation and layoffs are bad, that government spending is good for business, that protectionism benefits the economy, and so forth. This contains the famous and often quoted "Fallacy of the Broken Window", the fallacy still so often used to justify destructive and hurtful government policies.

we must assent to a maxim which will make the hair of protectionists stand on end -To break, to spoil, to waste, is not to encourage national labor; nor, more briefly, "destruction is not profit."