Bonus Quotation of the Day…

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… is a statement made by my Nobel-laureate emeritus colleague Vernon Smith when he was interviewed recently by National Review‘s Jay Nordlinger:

The reason you’re producing something is that someone wants to consume it, and if there’s no consumption, there’s no production.

DBx: Indeed. And so when advocates of tariffs and industrial policy assert that they want to elevate production over consumption, they are talking gibberish, as the former occurs only insofar as it enables the latter.