Here’s a follow-up note to Mr. P__.
Mr. __:
Thanks for your response to my earlier note, which you describe as “feeble.” You go on to assert that, in that note, I “hide [my] arrogance behind academese.”
With respect, in re-reading my letter I find no whiff of “academese.” But perhaps I’m too accustomed to “academese” to recognize it. Either way, if my examples and argument went over your head, I apologize for not being clearer.
As to your charging me with arrogance, I can only figuratively throw my hands up in bewilderment. Who is it that presumes to superintend how ordinary Americans spend their hard-earned incomes? Who is it that believes that when his fellow citizens are left free to choose what to purchase and what not to purchase they not only choose foolishly, but choose so very foolishly that he must coercively intrude to obstruct these free choices? Who is it that pretends to have divined which industries are too small in the U.S. (and, by implication, which industries are too large)? Who is it that is so cocksure of his beliefs that he boasts like a carnival barker about imposing punitive taxes on you, me, and all other of our fellow Americans whenever we spend our money in ways that don’t suit his fancy?
The answer, of course, is Trump.
In contrast, I and other free traders argue simply that Americans should be left free to spend their incomes in whatever peaceful ways they choose, unmolested by what Thomas Sowell called the “rampaging presumptions” of those persons who have haughtily convinced themselves that they know better than us what is best for us. There is, I submit, nothing about our argument that is arrogant. Quite the opposite.
If you want to see the face of a truly arrogant individual, Mr. P__, look at Trump.
Sincerely,
Donald J. Boudreaux
Professor of Economics
and
Martha and Nelson Getchell Chair for the Study of Free Market Capitalism at the Mercatus Center
George Mason University
Fairfax, VA 22030
