[arthurus]

You may understand Economics insofar as you have read about it in school. If you have an MBA you have probably had one survey course in the subject which taught no economics and extolled Keynes as the one who finally got it right. I have read and reread Hazlitt, Von Mises, Adam Smith, Hayek, Ricardo, etc., all of them including Keynes. For the lay person who has not the time for all that but desires to learn how to follow a claim and and a putative economic argument, one should read H Hazlitt Economics in One Lesson. It is a short book written in plain English. One who reads it will not blindly accept what a politician says ever again because one will have learned to automatically think through the secondary and tertiary effects of a utopian assertion.

[RegulatorCountry]

Bluster and filibuster does not hide the fact that you apparently cannot support your contention, that the Great Depression was caused by tariffs. Please demonstrate this with facts, not demanding that I read Economics For Dummies. At this juncture, the “dummy” looks to be you. Maybe you’d care to correct this misapprehension?

[ConservativeMind]

Free trade does not mean one cannot have excise taxes.

There is nothing inherently better about other taxes over excise taxes.

By the way, I have had a number of economics classes and have read several of the authors you listed. I specifically spoke up to, and successfully corrected, one of my Economics teachers concerning Keynes in one of my Masters-level Economics courses, as well, in which he agreed and corrected his own notes in front of the full classroom.

[ConservativeMind]

For educational purposes on behalf of other Free Republic readers, can you point to two existing countries which typify “free trade” practices to you?