By Robert Romano

Did you vote for Donald Trump or Bernie Sanders in the primary?

Think shifting economic production overseas and outsourcing jobs via mega trade deals like the 12-nation Trans-Pacific Partnership is just dumb?

Or that it might be better to tax foreign goods to discourage dumping on domestic markets?

You’re an economic illiterate.

Irrational.

That’s populism.

Don’t you know that cheaper is always better? Get with it.

It doesn’t matter where the money goes overseas. It will all be “reinvested” in U.S. dollar-denominated assets, chiefly low-risk U.S. Treasury bonds. And everyone knows the government knows better than U.S. businesses how to spend that money and create jobs anyway.

Besides, it helps to keep pushing interest rates lower and lower. Bond traders love it. Plus then businesses and you can borrow more and that boosts the economy.

Never mind the slowing economy, which has not grown above an inflation-adjusted 4 percent since 2000, and not above 3 percent since 2005.

Or the declining employment population ratio for working age adults — 16 to 64 year olds — accounting for more than 10 million potential jobs lost since the late 1990s.

We’ll probably need the prices of the goods we consume to be lower, since comparatively fewer of us will have jobs to pay for them.

Who needs jobs anyway? The government welfare printing press has got you covered. Free health care, housing and education. It’s good. The best, really.

A rising tide lifts all boats. By investing in growth overseas, it’s to our mutual benefit. It’s called comparative advantage. Don’t you have an economics degree? Look it up.

If we’re trading with these countries, they won’t act against our interests. They’d be harming their own customers. That’s irrational. They’d never do that.

And don’t worry about the spiraling $19 trillion national debt. We’re never going to pay that back anyway.

Heck, if we just moved to negative interest rates, banks would pay the federal government to borrow and refinance all that money.

They’d even pay you to never pay off your mortgage.

Then, the more money we borrow, the more revenue we will make. For every 1 percent of negative interest, that’s an extra $190 billion into government coffers. What a deal.

You see, we don’t really need to produce anything. That’s not what made America great.

Consuming inexpensive goods made with slave wages overseas by workers who might even live in their factories. That’s the true mark of greatness.

Why, if they just enslaved their people, we could save even more money on our electronics. Maybe if we run even bigger deficits they’ll start manufacturing shackles.

Because cheaper is better.

And this won’t have any effect at all on jobs that might have been created here in America. After all, correlation is not causation.

Just because we’re simultaneously losing millions of manufacturing jobs and global market share of manufacturing doesn’t mean they’ve got anything to do with each other. It’s just a coincidence.

If anything, it’s probably our irrational insistence on working for a living, taking care of our own families and pursuing the American dream that is driving manufacturers to leave the U.S.

They wouldn’t possibly respond to incentives and produce goods here. That’s just fantasy. Incentives only work abroad.

We’re an “advanced” economy now. We’ve grown out of that growth thing. Who needs growth, anyway?

You’re going to cause a trade war. Never mind the de facto currency manipulation tariffs they put on our goods. Trade wars hurt. They’ll stop buying our goods if…

Oh wait.

Hey, you want some illegal immigrants to do the jobs you’d rather not? They won’t assimilate and they might even utilize social services. And that’s what creates jobs. And eventually their progeny will tilt elections.

It’ll still be America.

What? How dare you complain? Protectionist. Mercantilist. Nativist.

The ghost of Smoot-Hawley will haunt you forever. This is why we lose elections. You’re just too dumb to get it.

We’re taking you off of our cocktail party invitation list. Can’t have any plebs in our little club.

Why don’t you vote for our candidates? They know better than you do what’s good for you.

If only you were more docile and passive you would simply submit to this globalist order, all the while pretending it actually benefitted you and your country.

What? You still think Trump would get a better deal?

Nationalist.

This is why the establishment hates you.

Because you don’t believe in magic tricks.

Robert Romano is the senior editor of Americans for Limited Government.