Costs are Not Benefits
5th April 2011
Don Boudreaux spanks the Wall Street Journal.
While pandering to economic ignorance often wins votes, it’s distressing to see such pandering – even for a good cause – in your pages. Trade’s benefits are measured in imports; the more the better. Exports are the costs of getting these benefits. In a truly ideal world – one quite the opposite of the ostensible ideal of Messrs. Baucus and Kerry – we’d continually receive cargo ship after cargo ship of automobiles, MP3 players, foodstuffs, and countless other valuable imports in exchange for our export of a single toothpick. Alas, it’s unfortunate that foreigners in fact are so prehensile that they demand lots more than one toothpick in exchange for the stuff they ship to us.