Quotation of the Day…

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… is from chapter 1 of William Graham Sumner’s 1885 book, Protectionism: the -ism Which Teaches that Waste Makes Wealth (original emphasis):

This is the fundamental fallacy of protection to which the analysis will bring us back again and again. Scientifically stated it is that protectionism sins against the conservation of energy. More simply stated it is that the protectionist either never sees or does not tell the other side of the account, the cost, the outlay for the gains which he alleges from protection, and that when these are examined and weighed they are sure to vastly exceed the gains, if the gains were real, even taking no account of the harm to national growth which is done by restriction and interference.