Quotation of the Day…

Tweet

… is from page 157 of the original edition of Frank Taussig’s 1915 volume, Some Aspects of the Tariff Question:

The reader who has followed the voluminous economic literature which German scholarship has piled up in recent years meets not infrequently the contention in favor of Schutz der nationalen Arbeit [Protection of National Labor]. Yet often he is left in doubt just how and why national labor is to be shielded by protection, – whether for preventing sudden shifts in the historically rooted industries of a slow-moving people, or for elevating the condition of labor in the whole country. Or, to take another example, it is often set forth, in the same quarters, that the burdens which the great social legislation of Germany imposes on her employers must be offset by duties on the products of competing foreign employers, – a proposition to which the stanch protectionist would unhesitatingly assent. But, if this be a good ground for compensating duties, why is not a general higher range of wages also a good ground, or any other condition unfavorable to the employer, – e.g., high income or property taxes, or poorer natural advantages? To answer these questions, some severe reasoning is called for: plain commonsense, unsupported by sustained argument from principle, does not suffice.

DBx: As the French purportedly say, plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose. (My very dear friend from France, Veronique de Rugy, tells me that the French don’t actually say this. Mais….) What was true in Bismarck’s Germany is true in Trump’s America: Protectionists fling against the wall all manner of arguments for protectionism, with much mutual inconsistency, hoping that enough credulous or ideologically benighted people will take no notice of the inconsistencies and the obvious absurdities of many of the arguments and assertions.

As I’ve written before, I have a bit of strange sympathy for protectionists, for they saddle themselves with the task of convincing people, in effect, that ten minus two equals fifteen. That’s a difficult task – or, rather, it would be a difficult task if the world were not populated with a large number of people who are eager to believe that, under the right circumstances, ten minus two does indeed equal fifteen.

…..

Pictured above is Frank Taussig (1859-1940).