Bonus Quotation of the Day…

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… is from pages 6-7 of the 2000 NBER draft of Dartmouth economist Douglas Irwin’s important paper “Tariffs and Growth in Late Nineteenth Century America” (which was published in January 2001 in The World Economy):

Contrary to the presumption of those cited earlier [e.g., Pat Buchanan and Michael Lind], therefore, a simple analysis of the data does not give the impression that late nineteenth century U.S. economic performance was extraordinary in comparison to the late nineteenth century United Kingdom or the late twentieth century United States. Late nineteenth century U.S. growth was largely due to the rapid growth of the labor force and the accumulation of capital, with productivity growth similar to that in the United Kingdom. Late twentieth century economic growth, judging from the increase in per capita income and in total factor productivity, appears to have been superior to that in the late nineteenth century.

DBx: Despite having the support of neither theory nor empirical evidence, protectionists will continue to assert that America’s late-19th-century economic growth was caused, or at least seriously assisted, by protectionist tariffs. Protectionists, sad to say, are not distinguished by their depth of thought, rigor of logic, intellectual consistency, or – of special relevance here – knowledge of history.