The passage quoted involves three or four fallacies already noticed, and an assumption of the truth of protectionism as a philosophy. As we have abundantly established, "workers" gain nothing by protection in their production (§ 48). Also, "a system which raises prices all around" must either lessen the demand and requirement for money, i.e., restrict business and the supply of goods (§ 112), or it must increase the amount of money. In the former case it could not but injure "workers"; in the latter case we should find ourselves dealing with a greenback fallacy. But passing by that, who are they who consume more than they produce? I can think only of (1) princes, pensioners, sinecurists, protected persons, and paupers, who draw support from taxes, and (2) swindlers, confidence men, and others who live by their wits on the produce of others. Those under (1), if they receive fixed money grants or subsidies, find an advance in price most disadvantageous. So the protected, of course, as consumers of others' products, when they spend what they have received by protection, suffer. Who are they who produce more than they consume? I can think only of (1) taxpayers, and (2) victims of fraud and of those economic errors which give one man's earnings to another's use. Rise in price is just as advantageous to this class as it was disadvantageous to the other, on the same hypothesis, viz., if they pay fixed money taxes to the parasites, and can sell their products for more money. Evidently the writer did not understand correctly what his two classes consisted of, and he put the protected "workers" in the wrong one. If in industry a person should produce more than he consumes, he could give it away, or it would decay on his hands. If he should consume more than he produced, he would run in debt and become bankrupt.[1] Protection has nothing to do with that.
- ↑ Mill, "Political Economy," Bk. I, ch. 5, § 5. Cairnes, "Leading Principles," ch. I, § 5.
