Bonus Quotation of the Day…
by Don Boudreaux
on February 26, 2019
… is from page 279 of the 1975 collection of some of Harry Johnson’s essays, On Economics and Society; specifically, it’s from Johnson’s 1973 address “Mercantilism: Past, Present, and Future”:
The real dangers [of an acceptance of mercantilist mythology] are milder [than “the commercial policy chaos of the 1930s”] but nonetheless important: for the more advanced and powerful countries, preoccupation of their political and governmental processes with the snatching of petty advantages in international diplomacy, preoccupation of their industrialists with competition in winning political favors rather than in producing better products more cheaply, and a marginal but significant relative reduction of the standard of living, narrowing of economic opportunity, [and] increase in inequality… and for the less developed countries, a significant narrowing of opportunities for promoting their economic development through competition in a large, liberal, and impersonal international market.
DBx: In the above photo, Harry Johnson is the man on the right.
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