A Chequer-Board of Nights and Days

The genuinely deep thinker grasps at least two important prongs of wisdom on this front: First, the fact that economic change causes some immediate losses to some persons does not, standing alone, create a presumption in favor of skepticism, or even of agnosticism, toward economic change -- a skepticism or agnosticism that mindlessly intones that the reality of such losses must in any real-world case be weighed against the benefits in order to "see" if economic change is good or not good.  Second and relatedly, the immediate consequences of economic change are not the only consequences; the long-run consequences are real and they matter; they, too, must be reckoned when we make claims about economic change and policies proposed to govern it.

--Don Boudreaux on trade. And listen to this. It's kind of important. I'm not Pollyannish about life and there are some very real problems that we need to tackle. But yes, scare stories abound and we need to distinguish them from discussions of real and present problems.