“>>Boy do we need some remedial economic refresher courses around here.”
We probably do. The half-educated no-tariff camp needs to go back and find out why the term ‘ceteris paribus’ is always used in economic modeling.
Free trade as described by David Ricardo is based on assumptions similar to the ‘perfect competition’ assumption used in supply and demand graphs. The real world includes the other factors that make simplistic modeling fail.
“The real world includes the other factors that make simplistic modeling fail.”
No. Valid principles remain valid. By your argument raising price does not lead to a decrease in the quantity demanded “in the real world” because other things are going on. Raising price does lead to a reduce quantity demanded, compared to compared what would be the case without the increase in price.
>>We probably do. The half-educated no-tariff camp needs to go back and find out why the term ‘ceteris paribus’ is always used in economic modeling.
Thanks for pointing that out. The economics experts always ignore that inconvenient fact.
Back when I was taking my ECON classes, the first thing they explained was ceteris paribus and then I learned why. It’s almost criminal to base anything on theories that explain the operation of a complex organism based on one change at a time.