Bob Higgs gets to the heart of the benefits of trade. A slice:
Yet producing and exporting goods is clearly always a means whereby the goods produced abroad and imported into the USA are acquired at lesser total resource cost than would be the case if those goods were produced domestically.
Many people fail to see the simple logic of this kind of exchange, yet in economic essentials it is no different from beneficial exchange that does not involve crossing national borders. The economically irrelevant borders are used by interested parties and economic nincompoops to muddy the waters of understanding—and to feather the nests of special interests who cannot or do not wish to compete openly for the business of American buyers. The outrageous upshot is, among other things, that aspirants for the presidency currently compete to promise the public that if elected they will carry out economically destructive anti-free-trade policies of various sorts.
Here’s part 7 of George Selgin’s Primer on Monetary Policy.
Matt Welch supplies a helpful readers’ guide to lefty panic over Gary Johnson’s candidacy.
Ryan Bourne defends surge pricing.
I am very eager to read Doug Irwin’s forthcoming (2017) book on the history of trade policy in America. (HT Tyler Cowen)
Everyone who frets over “corporate inversions” should read this essay by Veronique de Rugy.
Sarah Skwire gives a wonderful history lesson in religious freedom.
Steve Horwitz explains that there is no such thing as “trickle-down economics.“
