Robert Kuttner Quotes

The military system is, to a substantial extent, a method whereby the population provides a subsidy to the high technology industry.

The arguments for protection are more easily made attractive than those for free trade.

It's not just free trade verses protectionism any longer, you've got the concepts of managed trade and reciprocity, and environmental issues.

Protectionism has to be avoided. Protectionism is not only on goods but also in the area of services. Financial protectionism is also bad and should be avoided.

Taxpayers are burdened with so-called defense spending that is used not for defense, but to create or hold jobs in someone's congressional district, or to continue to pile up profits for an arms manufacturer.

We discover that the fortunes realized by our manufacturers are no longer solely the reward of sturdy industry and enlightened foresight, but that they result from the discriminating favor of the government.

… what is called free trade, foolishly by some and wickedly by others.

No Nation can encourage or enlarge its Proportion of any private and natural Manufacture, without discouraging the rest; because whether an Allowance be given, either to the Manufacturer, or Transporter, that Allowance serves, and is employed to attract the Workmen from those other Manufactures, which have some likeness to the encouraged Manufacture: So that what is transported of the encouraged Manufacture, beyond nature, only balances the Diminution of the others.

We will seek to eliminate scandalous agricultural subsidies which developed nations have that harms our own agriculture.

No matter how large, efficient, and mature … industries become, they continue to demand protection, and thanks to their wealth and political power, they get it. The longer they live, the bigger babies they are.

When we seek to reinstate the self-confidence and business enterprise of our citizens by discrediting an abject dependence upon governmental favor, we strive to stimulate those elements of American character which support the hope of American achievement.

Government subsidies can be critically analyzed according to a simple principle: You are smarter than the government, so when the government pays you to do something you wouldn't do on your own, it is almost always paying you to do something stupid.

Historically, the quickest and easiest way to make a lot of money is to have a government give it to you.

Every coercive monopoly was created by government intervention into the economy: by special privileges, such as franchises or subsidies, which closed the entry of competitors into a given field, by legislative action.

The Military Industrial Complex. President Eisenhower had it wrong. It’s the Military Industrial Congressional Complex.

Sugar protectionism is government planning, It is industrial policy—government picking winners and losers—applied to agriculture.

Free trade is opposed by most people who call themselves “free traders”.

1971 … was the year when, for the very first time, the United States bailed out an industrial firm whose own financial management had driven it to the brink of extinction. The company was Lockheed Aircraft Corporation and the bailout was in the form of a loan guarantee worth $250 million.

Too many business have successfully lobbied for special favors and treatment by seeking mandates for their products, subsidies (in the form of cash payments from the government), and regulations and tariffs to keep more efficient competitors at bay. Crony capitalism is much easier than competing in an open market. But it erodes our overall standard of living and stifles entrepreneurs by rewarding the politically favored rather than those who provide what consumers want.

Here, as everywhere, Protection involves this great disadvantage, that, once given, it is difficult to withdraw …. the system, once established, led to perpetual wrangling on the part of rival industries

Contrary to the myth of untrammeled free enterprise, this expanding industry was fueled at every stage by government intervention..

it's not only companies who can undermine fair competition. Governments can do it, too. And governments do that when they hand out subsidies to just the favorite few, the selected. They may do that when they hand out subsidies -- and, of course, all financed by taxpayers -- to companies. That may be in the form of special tax treatments, like the tax benefits that firms like Fiat, Starbucks and Apple got from some governments in Europe. Those subsidies stop companies from competing on equal terms. They can mean that the companies that succeed, well, they are the companies that got the most subsidy, the ones that are the best-connected, and not, as it should be, the companies that serve consumers the best.

If you can't compete fairly, honestly, effectively, no government should intervene. Now, some governments do. They prop up failing industries.

Consider trade protectionism. It's been tried - and found wanting - since the Great Depression.

The E.U., China, and Japan all talk free trade, and they all practice protectionism.