John Robson: Flood of EV Subsidies Shows Politicians Ignore Economic Theory, Past Experience

Commentary Q: Who said “A mere recital of the economic policies of governments all over the world is calculated to cause any serious student of economics to throw up his hands in despair”? A: Just about anyone who ever looked at them, including the Canadian and Ontario first ministers emptying the treasury into the pockets of multinational corporations. For instance, the $2.5 billion Justin Trudeau and Doug Ford each just shovelled into Honda as if it were chump change. That precise quotation is from Henry Hazlitt’s 1946 “Economics in One Lesson,” the classic no MP knows. (Correct me if I’m wrong … please.) As I first read in graduate school, not for a course of course: “What possible point can there be … in discussing refinements and advances in economic theory, when popular thought and the actual policies of governments, certainly in everything connected with international relations, have not yet caught up with Adam Smith?”...