A protectionist is someone who argues that you should be poorer so that they can be richer

We’ve made this point before but it’s one that bears repeating. A protectionist is someone who argues that you should be poorer so that they can be richer. Your access to lovely cheap and useful stuff made by foreigners must be restricted so that they can overcharge you for the tat they manufacture.

With that in mind we can now evaluate this suggestion:

Britain must take advantage of Brexit to spur a renaissance in its industrial heartlands by setting tougher standards for renewable energy projects, according to a major Conservative party donor.

Ukraine-born businessman Alexander Temerko has urged Greg Clark, the Business Secretary, to insist that new wind power projects contain at least 60pc British-made components.

Mr Temerko, who was formerly deputy chair of offshore engineering group OGN, warned that the engineering yards of the North East risk losing out to companies in Spain and Germany for lucrative contracts building the parts which will be used to construct giant offshore wind turbines in the early 2020s.

Maybe we do want wind turbines and maybe we don’t want birdchoppers. But if we do we’d like them nice and cheap and made by the most efficient at doing so. If that’s UK onshore producers then good for them, if it ain’t then we don’t want to be buying their tat anyway.

For the call here is that those who own, those who work in, onshore producers should be protected from foreign competition so that they can overcharge us. The argument is indeed that we should be made poorer so they can be richer. At which point the answer is obvious - go boil yer heads.


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The Power of Capitalism