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Scott Sumner reflects on the widespread failure to understand trade.  A slice:

Most people view trade and automation as being radically different issues. Technological progress is viewed as good; trade is viewed with some suspicion. Economists see the two issues as being quite similar; creative destruction that improves overall welfare at a cost of painful dislocation for some workers and companies. Just imagine if Trump started railing against technological progress—even his supporters would be perplexed.

(I would summarize much of Scott’s important point this way: Most people do not understand that trade is simply one of the many forms of economic competition and manifestations of consumer sovereignty.  And so unless those who oppose trade are willing to oppose all forms of economic competition and all manifestations of consumer sovereignty – for all forms of competition and all manifestations of consumer sovereignty destroy some jobs and businesses without employing all of the specific, displaced workers and resources – those who oppose trade reveal that they do not understand that which they oppose.)

Jeffrey Tucker nominates Thomas Carlyle as the founding father of fascism.

My colleague Alex Tabarrok explains how safety can kill.

Levi Russell documents much of what is wrong with the economics of the Nobel laureate economist Joseph Stiglitz.

New York Times left-liberal columnist Nicholas Kristof is right to complain that “On campuses at this point, illiberalism is led by liberals” – by which, of course, Kristof means left-liberals.  (HT Tyler Cowen)

Writing in the Orange County Register, GMU Econ alum – and SUNY-Purchase economist – Liya Palagashvili highlights one particularly harmful consequence of the Obama administration’s new overtime-pay diktats.

My colleague Pete Boettke recounts, with appropriate pride and pleasure, the just-completed academic year for George Mason University’s and the Mercatus Center’s F.A. Hayek Program for Advanced Study of Philosophy, Politics, and Economics.

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