In my latest National Post column I say the Canadian Prime Minister's inability to see the People's Republic of China clearly is not harmless naiveté.

"Discerning 'right' from 'wrong' in economics is a matter of distinguishing mutualistic from parasitic relationships."

Michael Rothschild, Bionomics: The Inevitability of Capitalism

"you cannot build prescriptions on mere knowledge of positive facts, however systematized and comprehensive. You need a goal as well... it is all very well to know how the world works... But unless you have some test whereby you can distinguish good from bad, desirable consequences from undesirable, you are without an essential constituent of a theory of policy. You are like the captain of a ship equipped with charts and compasses and all the means of propulsion and steering, but without an assigned destination. A theory of economic policy, in the sense of a body of precepts for action, must take its ultimate criterion from outside economics."

Lionel Robbins The Theory of Economic Policy in English Classical Political Economy pp. 176-77.
 

"This study is an attempt to tell them that, not only is the Emperor naked, but his body is hardly a thing of beauty."

William Stanbury in Fraser Forum August 1998 [the actual topic was CanCon regulations, but the statement is apt surprisingly often]

Especially in his speeches and lectures Ludwig von Mises "would emphasize again and again that interventionist policies are 'wrong,' not from the point of view of the economist himself, but from the point of view of those initiating these policies (or at least from the point of view of those whose well-being the policies are supposed to enhance)."

Israel M. Kirzner in Edwin G. Dolan, ed., The Foundations of Modern Austrian Economics

"The Law of Supply and Demand. As inexorable as the Law of Gravity, even governments cannot break it, although they often try."

William Trench in Only You Can Save Canada

In my latest National Post column I ask why, when budget projections are so reliably wrong, including this year's way-off deficit predictions and apparently next year's too, we nod solemnly at each year's pseudo-sophisticated decimal points and econometric analyses.

"The two most important questions in any economic analysis are: (1) What is the alternative? and (2) What happens then, and then, and then?"

Robert Higgs “Allocation of Risks Associated with Medical Goods: Government Regulation versus Market Process”