Capitalism is the greatest creator of wealth and increased living standards ever.
Actually, economic protectionism is the greatest creator of wealth, a condition utterly anathema to laissez-faire conceptions. For example, consider Ha-Joon Chang's Kicking Away the Ladder. As noted therein:
Almost all of today’s rich countries used tariff protection and subsidies to develop their industries. Interestingly, Britain and the USA, the two countries that are supposed to have reached the summit of the world economy through their free-market, free-trade policy, are actually the ones that had most aggressively used protection and subsidies.
This is wrong.
Like all social sciences, you always can find someone who bucks the conventional wisdom. However, the overwhelming consensus amongst economists is that free trade is the best creator of wealth. As Alan Binder notes
Nonsense.
Not even Adam Smith believed that. Perhpas you should reread Wealth of Nations again, and this time read it entirely and then you'll better understand what exactly he was talking about when it comes to trade policy.
Free trade makes sense under certain conditions : when there is a nature advantage to one nation and a nature disadvantage to the other. AS in don't try to grow cork or make wine in ENGLAND.
Smith ALSO believed in and supported STRONG tariffs to protect nacient and national industries, but oddly the free trade advocates of today never seem to mention that.
I wonder why?
For more than two centuries economists have steadfastly promoted free trade among nations as the best trade policy.
Yeah? Thank god they weren't in charge of American trade policy for the first 160 years or so of American history, then
Because if those idiots had been creating policy American would still be a third world agricultural nation if they had.
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