Posted on 03/21/2016 3:10:17 AM PDT by reaganaut1
This month marks the 240th anniversary of the publication of Adam Smiths The Wealth of Nations, the watershed rationale for a free-market economy. Today, in the 2016 U.S. presidential race, populist candidates including Donald Trump and self-described socialist Senator Bernie Sanders are running against many of the central tenets of Smiths ideas and with considerable popular success.
The Sanders and Trump platforms range from protectionist anti-trade measures to expanded entitlement spending. Such policies are more popular than in previous elections and in some cases even pushing other candidates, especially Hillary Clinton, to grudgingly endorse them. Yet centuries of economic research have demonstrated that on a host of issues, from trade to taxes, economic policy that fosters free markets is critical to economic growth.
Our presidential candidates in 2016 should remember that Adam Smiths key insight was that individuals working in their own interests are led by an invisible hand to serve public interest and benefit the broader society. In particular, Republicans should be reminded of the domestic economic benefits of free trade, particularly those that would come from prospective trade agreements with European and Asian nations.
(Excerpt) Read more at nationalreview.com ...
Claiming that both Trump and Sanders are ignorant in economics represents specious reasoning. Here we have Sanders, a chronic life time failure, basically a crackpot compared to a hugely successful businessman, Donald Trump. There is something wrong with this equation!
It looks like yet another hit piece on Trump.
I believe that someone like Trump with a demonstrated record of successfully applying common sense and business sense to make the best of things. Can he not do that repeatedly with our trade imbalance? He would be much better at it than Hillary, with her lack of nongovernment experience and record of corrupt cronyism, Bernie the crackpot, or anyone else on the scene, do you not agree?
... yet another Goldman Sachs operative:
Jon (Hartley) previously worked at Goldman Sachs in their Quantitative Investment Strategies (QIS) group, working as a client portfolio manager on their liquid alternative investment platform.
Read more at: http://www.nationalreview.com/author/jon-hartley
... and Bush supporter:
Jeb Bushs Tax Plan Offers Badly Needed Conservative Reforms
NR’s basic lie is that what we have NOW is free trade. What we have now is mercantilism—precisely what Adam Smith attacked. Except the mercantilists are the Chinese, the Mexicans, etc., and the Uniparty elite.
Trump is the ONLY candidate who does not want to dismantle and end the United States, and replace it with a North America without borders, populated by Muslim and Mexican rapists and murderers, a Third World hellhole.
Cruz is a Bush sock-puppet.
It’s National Review. OF COURSE it’s another hitpiece on Trump.
That claim can easily be made against every seating Congressman, except a few, and most academica economic professors today...
...and his point is?
The deal maker better get going because if Rubio and Ksick throw their delegates to Cruz then ding ding ding. We have a winner.
Duhhhhhhh - that would be 'Lyin Ted'
What is the national review? Never heard of it?
I’ll give Trump credit where it’s due, but Trump’s businesses have nothing to do with manufacturing and trade ... which means he’s not subject to the same competitive realities that a company like Ford or Apple or IBM faces. He has made a career in luxury residential buildings in Manhattan, golf courses, and casinos. There’s nothing wrong with that, but in the one instance where he even indirectly got involved in a business of selling consumer products — namely, branding his own clothing line — it’s noteworthy that his name was all over foreign-made merchandise.
“Cruz is a Bush sock-puppet.”
No he’s not.
Donald Trump has a bachelor’s degree in economics from the Wharton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania.
I’d like to see National Review publish a copy of the 1924 Republican platform.
With Neil Bush on the Finance team for Cruz, it makes you wonder who’s funneling money to and for Cruz, and, perhaps, beyond.
Bringing in GOPe men has consequences.
All you had to look at is where it was posted to see that it’s another Trump hit piece.
Trump is simply for fair free trade—as well as lowered taxes and reduced counterproductive regulation.
The big-government economiist (while claiming he’s not a big government economist) would disagree with Trump’s repeal of Obamacare for a private-market solution—AND he would expand the EITC.
Open your eyes.
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