… is from page 55 of Edwin Cannan’s 1914 book, Wealth: A Brief Explanation of the Causes of Economic Wealth:
Of course no one wants money for its own sake: we want it because we can get the things and services which we want by paying it away again.
DBx: Stated so plainly, this truth is indisputable. Yet every time you encounter someone complaining about the so-called “trade deficit,” understand that you are likely encountering someone who implicitly believes that money is wanted for its own sake. A perfect example of such an economic ignoramus is Donald Trump, who in 1990 said to Playboy this: “The Japanese double-screw the U.S., a real trick: First they take all our money with their consumer goods, then they put it back in buying all of Manhattan. So either way, we lose.”
You’d have to look far and wide, and probably without success, to find as unalloyed and excellent a specimen of economic ignorance as this one remark by Trump.
