http://www.townhall.com/columnists/WalterEWilliams/2006/10/25
/should_we_trade_at_all
Should we trade at all
By Walter E. Williams
Wednesday, October 25, 2006
Dr. Williams serves on the faculty of George Mason University as John M. Olin Distinguished Professor of Economics and is the author of More Liberty Means Less Government: Our Founders Knew This Well.
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You might wonder how it is possible for, say, the sugar industry to rip off consumers. After all, consumers are far more numerous than sugar workers and sugar bosses. It’s easy. A lot is at stake for those in the sugar industry, workers and bosses. They dedicate huge resources to pressure Congress into enacting trade restrictions. But how many of us consumers will devote the same resources to unseat a congressman who voted for sugar restrictions that forced us to pay $21 more for the sugar our family uses? It’s the problem of visible beneficiaries of trade restrictions, sugar workers and bosses, gaining at the expense of invisible victims — sugar consumers. We might think of it as congressional price-gouging.
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Doctor Williams has a unique ability to frame an issue so even I can understand it.
Tariffs, taxes, “price supports”, “price floors”, “minimums” are all just things that make us poorer.
Universally poorer.
Every family in Amerika is paying to subsidize the sugar producers in the South, their lobbyists, and the politicians that they have bought and paid for.
When the final history of mankind is written, gubamint will be recognized as the ultimate mental disorder. It will probably be cited as worse than any genocidal maniac who used gubamint. It will be that quain period in human development when, like the Salem Witch trials, Human sacrifice, race wars, and (my particular favorite) genocide, the participant in the era didn’t realize just how STUPID they were being.
Similar to sugar, there are: minimum wage laws, milk price “supports”, minimum cigarette prices, and all manner of other gubamint actions that make us poorer.
What have you done about it?
Reinke Faces Life 