A Stitch in Haste

Alleged left-libertarian (ahem) Barack Obama on why free trade is bad:

It's a game where trade deals like NAFTA ship jobs overseas and force parents to compete with their teenagers to work for minimum wage at Wal-Mart.

I was not aware that Mexico and Canada had become "overseas."

(Incidentally, Wal-Mart always pays well above minimum wage, including to people who would have great difficulty finding jobs anywhere else. How evil of them.* And that's assuming left-libertarians (ahem) like Obama let Wal-Mart open any stores in the first place.)

Also:

It's a game where lobbyists write check after check and Exxon turns record profits[.]

Exxon also remits record taxes. How evil of them. And of course, since the vast majority of Exxon stock is owned, directly or indirectly, by institutional investors on behalf of such "greedy capitalists" as government employee pension funds and university endowments, I guess they're all evil too.

It's refreshing to see libertarianism meshing so well with leftism in the politician very likely to be our next president.

Ahem.

(Via Greg Mankiw. More thoughts at Rolling Doughnut.)

Obama Archive:
Barack Obama, Politician
On Obama's "Big Tent"
Obama's Broken Window Fallacy
Obama Unveils His "Left-(Un)Libertarian" Credentials

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*Actually, Wal-Mart is indeed evil when it comes to the minimum wage:

Wal-Mart CEO Lee Scott said he's urging Congress to consider raising the minimum wage so that Wal-Mart customers don't have to struggle paycheck to paycheck.

Of course, a higher minimum wage hurts Wal-Mart's smaller competitors far more than it hurts Wal-Mart itself. It is very often larger companies that "volunteer" for more burdensome workplace regulation, since they can endure it while smaller firms can't. As those smaller firms go out of business, the larger firms gain market share and may even end up ahead of the game. It's simply another form of (un-capitalist) rent-seeking. Being an "ethical employer" or "responsible corporate citizen" is a disingenuous smokescreen.

But somehow I doubt that was what Obama was referring to.