Bonus Quotation of the Day…
by Don Boudreaux
on December 5, 2017
… is from page 253 of the 1991 Robert Schalkenbach Foundation edition of Henry George‘s 1886 volume, Protection or Free Trade:
Take, for instance, the question of the effects of machinery. The opinion that finds most influential expression is that labor-saving invention, although it may sometimes cause temporary inconvenience or even hardship to a few, is ultimately beneficial to all. On the other hand, there is among working-men a wide-spread belief that labor-saving machinery is injurious to them, although, since the belief does not enlist those powerful special interests that are concerned in the advocacy of protection, it has not been wrought into an elaborate system and does not get anything like the same representation in the organs of public opinion.
DBx: Corporate executives and lobbyists very often assert that concern for the well-being of their workers is among the reasons they seek tariffs punitive taxes on fellow citizens who choose to purchase products from foreign competitors. How many of these executives and lobbyists are as eager to demand that government prevent them from saving labor by preventing them from using labor-saving technology as they are to demand that government prevent consumers from saving labor by preventing consumers from buying imports? Answer: not many.
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