Bonus Quotation of the Day…
by Don Boudreaux
on March 23, 2018
… is from pages 60-61 of George Stigler‘s November 1959 Quarterly Journal of Economics paper, “The Politics of Political Economists,” as reprinted in Stigler’s 1965 collection, Essays in the History of Economics (link added):
An equally apt example of the effect of economic analysis [at sharpening one’s understanding of reality] was given by Edwin Cannan. Consider the perennial charge of profiteering that is levied at the producers or owners of commodities in relatively short supply. As Cannan pointed out, this is a singularly perverse distribution of blame. The only way in which the supplier can benefit by a high price is by selling the commodity, that is, by making the supply larger. If there is a shortage of meat, then we should blame everyone except the members of the livestock industry, for everyone else is not producing the meat which we desire in larger quantities.
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