{"id":47959,"date":"2023-01-25T01:00:22","date_gmt":"2023-01-25T06:00:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=47959"},"modified":"2023-01-24T10:35:08","modified_gmt":"2023-01-24T15:35:08","slug":"qotd-national-unity-and-economic-commonsense","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2023\/01\/25\/qotd-national-unity-and-economic-commonsense\/","title":{"rendered":"QotD: &#8220;National unity&#8221; and economic commonsense"},"content":{"rendered":"<blockquote><p><a href=\"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/QotD-thumbnail-400x400.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" style=\"float:left; padding: 0px 25px 10px 0px\" src=\"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/QotD-thumbnail-400x400.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"400\" height=\"400\" class=\"alignleft size-full wp-image-48672\" srcset=\"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/QotD-thumbnail-400x400.png 400w, https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/QotD-thumbnail-400x400-150x150.png 150w, https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/QotD-thumbnail-400x400-50x50.png 50w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 400px) 100vw, 400px\" \/><\/a>Protectionists &#8230; often trot out various versions of this national-unity argument. The premise is always that when the government uses trade restrictions that reduce the business, wages, and profits of many of us in order to compel the many of us to artificially to increase the business, wages, and profits of some of us, national unity is being served.<\/p>\n<p>But never is a compelling explanation offered of just how the people of the nation are made more united \u2013 of just how some common national cause is being pursued \u2013 when one subset of the people convinces the government to reduce the real incomes, options, and freedom of another subset of the people.<\/p>\n<p>Economically uninformed economic nationalists &#8230; focus only on the gains that protectionism brings to protected domestic producers. &#8230; being blind to the losses suffered by all fellow citizens save the relatively small handful of protected interests \u2013 or, inexplicably, discounting the reality or severity of these losses \u2013 interpret the gains enjoyed by the protected interests as evidence that protectionism is in the national interest.<\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s all (to use an old-fashioned term) poppycock.<\/p>\n<p>Don Boudreaux, <a href=\"https:\/\/cafehayek.com\/2019\/04\/bonus-quotation-of-the-day-287.html\" rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\">&#8220;Bonus Quotation of the Day\u2026&#8221;, <em>Caf\u00e9 Hayek<\/em><\/a>, 2019-04-01.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Protectionists &#8230; often trot out various versions of this national-unity argument. The premise is always that when the government uses trade restrictions that reduce the business, wages, and profits of many of us in order to compel the many of us to artificially to increase the business, wages, and profits of some of us, national [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":35193,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[25,41],"tags":[727,266,1185],"class_list":["post-47959","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economics","category-quotations","tag-cronycapitalism","tag-protectionism","tag-tariffs"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/favicon.png","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-ctx","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47959","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=47959"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47959\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":79530,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47959\/revisions\/79530"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35193"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=47959"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=47959"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=47959"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}