One of the gravest economic mistakes that humans can make is to forget that ours is unavoidably a world of scarcity.

Only individuals, separately or in voluntarily formed groups such as firms, trade; countries as such do not trade.

The most far-fetched myth that I’ve encountered recently is that the wealth of the modern Western world, especially that of the United States, is the product of slavery.

This thought experiment will help you wrap your head around the inanity of Trump’s trade policies.

America can run trade deficits forever.

The work you do probably does not produce something you could consume. Even more striking is the fact that almost everything you consume is something you could not possibly produce. Your daily life depends on the cooperation of hundreds of millions of other people.

Each consumer is free, on his or her own, to visit farms and factories and processing plants in order to purchase items directly from producers. But, of course, such visits would be enormously time consuming and would cost quite a lot in airfare and other travel expenses. We know that retailers and other middlemen perform valuable services because we observe consumers, everyday, voluntarily paying for these services.

Protectionism is the belief that domestic producers have a higher claim to your money than you do.

The real minimum wage is zero, despite the best efforts of the economically illiterate public sector do-gooder.

Keynesian prognostication aside, natural disasters are always bad for economic growth.