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… is from page 344 of the 1990 Transaction Publishers reprint of W.H. Hutt [2]‘s 1936 book, Economists and the Public [3]:
In countless fields and by innumerable devices we see the deliberate contrivance of scarcities, the abolition of which would surely enable the dissolution of what we to-day regard as physical poverty.
While many such contrivances have thankfully been abolished or reduced in the 80 years since Hutt wrote these words, too many – such as the tariffs and occupational-licensing restrictions that persist – still remain. And these contrivances that make scarcity artificially worse are endorsed by conservatives and “Progressives” alike.