Free Trade and Its Importance

A friend wrote me saying that he had gone online after hearing me recommend Club for Growth and joined it.  As you know, Sherry and I believe that until the advent of the Tea Party, the Club was the pointy end of the political spear of economic freedom.  They still are the group most focused on electing strong advocates for that liberty in safe Republican districts during primaries.

But he wanted some clarification on the idea of free trade, one of the Club's basic tenets.  He wrote:

I have thought of free trade as being an agreement between two nations that allows goods made in one country to be exported to the other nation, up to the limits that no impact would be felt by either country's own businesses. In other words, if importing rice would cause economic harm to the receiving country's growers, then limits in the form of restricted goods or quotas would be mutually agreed upon.

I replied at length.

Atlas Shrugged -- the Movie

I bought a Kindle last November, and downloaded Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged onto it.  Last night, about 9:30, I finished it.

I have never been a big fan of Rand's magnum opus, and I have not been converted by this reading.  My concern is mostly that it is too easy to take literally her dramatic device that prosperity depends upon the brilliant few, when, as you know, it depends on economic freedom for all.  However, the allegorical approach makes for a better read, and there never has been a stronger literary advocate for individualism and economic freedom than Ayn Rand. 

A few days ago, at the Club for Growth Winter Economic Conference -- about which more later -- I was privileged to attend a screening of the new movie Atlas Shrugged -- Part I, and to meet the writer and producers.

What Romney Ought to Say on RomneyCare

We returned from the Club for Growth Winter Economic Conference Sunday.  At breakfast yesterday morning I whined about the Republican Presidential candidates we had seen, and especially about Mitt Romney.

I said to Sherry, "How can he continue to defend RomneyCare?  Though it's true that a state is on sounder ground regulating intrastate economic activity than the Federal government is, he'll never be able to attack ObamaCare until he repudiates his Massachusetts program.  He must be worried about looking like he's waffled.  Again."

Bam!  Her steel trap mind slammed shut on the right argument again.  She said "Romney ought to say that the states are indeed laboratories for democracy, and now that his experiment has failed in Massachusetts, it's clear it won't work for the nation, so we must repeal it."

Now, why couldn't I think of that?

Of course, he didn't say it during the dabate before passage, either....