≡ Menu

In the Spirit of Bastiat

My brilliant young colleague Bryan Caplan, in this post over at EconLog, offers intuitively compelling alternatives for several economic arguments that are too often presented counterintuitively — and in doing so, Bryan very nicely summarizes the point I sought to make in this post.

Here’s Bryan:

Counterintuitive claim: Free trade makes countries richer, even if the other countries have big advantages like cheaper labor or more advanced technology.

Intuitive version:  We’d be better off if other countries gave us stuff for free.  Isn’t “really cheap” the next-best thing?

Comments