Peter Gallagher

It seems Krug­man will say any­thing to score a point. He wants to argue that insuf­fi­cient demand (unem­ploy­ment) is a prob­lem and that redis­tri­b­u­tion (trade taxes) is not.

“…the attempt to place blame for the Depres­sion on pro­tec­tion­ism is a sort of Noble Lie, an attempt to scare peo­ple into trade pol­icy that’s good for other rea­sons” Extract from Hayek, Trade Restric­tions, And The Great Depres­sion — Paul Krug­man Blog — NYTimes.com

An attempt to scare peo­ple? I sup­pose he’d know.

But this is dri­vel. Open­ing (and main­tain­ing open) mar­kets is not “good for other rea­sons.” It’s good pre­cisely because mar­kets where there is com­pet­i­tive sup­ply sus­tain sur­pris­ing (inno­v­a­tive, bigger-than-you-expected) growth. The oppo­site of depression.