… is from page 84 of Deirdre McCloskey’s stupendous 2010 volume, Bourgeois Dignity:
[I]f protection against free trade is good for the country, why not for the region, or the city, or the neighborhood, or your house?
DBx: This question is one that protectionists have never been able to answer.
Oh, they attempt to answer it. But no offered answer is persuasive. Most such answers are ones that reveal protectionists as believing that people in the home country are made worse off by greater abundance that comes from abroad. It’s an absurd belief, of course, but protectionism is inescapably absurd.
