… is from page 293 of the 1962 Gateway edition of University of Georgia economist David McCord Wright’s unfortunately forgotten 1951 book, Capitalism:
We cannot tell the people of other countries that the protection of economic vested interests will inevitably cut off the progress of their society if we insist on protecting our own vested interests ourselves. The American tariff makes no sense whatever in the light of the perpetuation of capitalism or the future development of the world.
DBx: Yes. Yet even if we Americans cared not a whit about anyone other than ourselves, American tariffs would still make no sense whatever given that these special privileges enrich a visible few Americans at the greater expense of the masses of Americans.
Sincere protectionists seem to be intellectually unable to see any consequences of tariffs beyond the first and most obvious. Seeing only these consequences – namely, the enrichment of the protected producers – these protectionists mistakenly conclude that tariffs enrich the nation. They commit the fallacy of composition. Sincere protectionists are like people who, seeing the gains enjoyed by successful armed robbers – but blind to the losses of the robbers’ victims – conclude that armed robbery is an excellent means of enriching the nation.
Insincere projectionists – that is, protectionists who plead for tariffs, import quotas, and subsidies out of purely venal motives that are equivalent to the motives of armed robbers – hope and work to hide from the general public all the many ill consequences of tariffs. These protectionists insist, even when they know better, that the only effect of tariffs is the enrichment of protected corporate shareholders and their workers. These protectionists are dishonest.
