… is from pages 400=-41 of Milton & Rose Friedman’s great 1980 book, Free To Choose:
The individual consumer’s voice is drowned out in the cacophony of the “interested sophistry of merchants and manufacturers” and their employees. The result is a serious distortion of the issue. For example, supporters of tariffs treat it as self-evident that the creation of jobs is a desirable end, in and of itself, regardless of what the persons employed do. That is clearly wrong. If all we want are jobs, we can create any number – for example, have people dig holes and then fill them up again, or perform other useless tasks. Work is sometimes its own reward. Mostly, however, it is the price we pay to get the things we want. Our real objective is not just jobs but productive jobs – jobs that will mean more goods and services to consume.
DBx: Indeed so. Yet this obvious point is denied by protectionists too many to count – none of whom, however, spend any of their time digging holes only to refill them, or on any other such, not merely unproductive, but wasteful, tasks.
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The quotation within the above quotation is of Adam Smith.
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