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we should tax computer investment? the distribution of the benefits : i want to end this section with something else the early economists would recognise – that, whatever it has done to widen the distribution of income, free trade with labour - rich countries can have significantly progressive effects on prices. in their early writings on international trade the classical economists reserved particular hostility for the corn laws. introduced after the napoleonic wars, in the midst of an economic downturn, these measures imposed heavy restrictions and tariffs on agricultural imports. the result was a much higher price of food, benefiting agricultural landowners and penalising the less well - off, for whom food was the major part of their consumption. their eventual repeal in 1846, a landmark in britain ’ s move towards ( and support for ) free trade in the second half of the century, owed much to the intellectual arguments of the classical economists. but it also came about because of what those restrictions meant for the poor. see for example acemoglu ( 1998 ) and behar ( 2013 ). there are some obvious historical exceptions to this support. in 1779, there was a spate of “ anti - machinery ” riots. in one of them, richard arkwright ’ s new mill in birkacre, in lancashire, was destroyed. thirty years later the “ luddites ”, formed mainly of textile workers, also sought to destroy labour - replacing weaving machinery. quoted in irwin ( 1996 ). the campaigner richard cobden described the opponents of corn law abolition as “ the bread - taxing oligarchy, unprincipled, unfeeling, rapacious and plundering ”. all speeches are available online at www. bankofengland. co. uk / speeches again, it is worth remembering this point today. much of the work on trade and inequality focuses on the potentially differential effect on wages and employment. the gross costs of trade may not be evenly distributed. as chart 11 demonstrates, however, the gross benefits of lower import prices are probably skewed as well. on average, things that are more tradable are also consumed disproportionately by the less well - off. it turns out this pattern is common to all developed economies. chart 12 is taken from a recent study by fajgelbaum and khandelwal ( 2016 ), describing what would happen to relative consumer prices, and thereby the distribution of income, if international trade with the developing world were suddenly shut down. in every