Quotations of the day on trade.... • AEI | Carpe Diem Blog » AEIdeas

Quotations of the day on trade.... • AEI | Carpe Diem Blog » AEIdeas:
….are from Adam Smith (Wealth of Nations) and Henry Hazlitt in Economics in One Lesson quoting Smith (emphasis added):

Smith: It is the maxim of every prudent master of a family, never to attempt to make at home what it will cost him more to make than to buy. The tailor does not attempt to make his own shoes, but buys them of the shoemaker. The shoemaker does not attempt to make his own clothes, but employs a tailor. The farmer attempts to make neither the one nor the other, but employs those different artificers. All of them find it for their interest to employ their whole industry in a way in which they have some advantage over their  neighbors, and  to  purchase  with a part of its produce, or what is the same thing, with the price of  a part of it, whatever else they have occasion for. What is prudence in the conduct of every private family can scarce be folly in that of a great kingdom.

To which Henry Hazlitt added:

But whatever led people to suppose that what was prudence in the conduct of every private family could be folly in that of a great kingdom? It was a whole network of fallacies, out of which mankind has still been unable to cut its way. And the chief of them was the central fallacy with which this book is concerned. It was that of considering merely the immediate effects of a tariff on special groups, and neglecting to consider its long-run effects on the whole community.

Later, Hazlitt makes this observation of the economic distortions and inefficiencies that result from trade protectionism and tariffs...

Read on!!