Economic insights and lessons….

        

Under the heading of read ‘em and learn, we’ve got another very informative item to pass along.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10000872396390444914904577621083163383966.html

The first passage that caught our attention is this one:

Today, 70% of government discretionary spending devalues human assets by paying people to be unemployed, unmarried, retired, sick, poor, homeless, hapless, disabled or drugged. With the eclipse of family life in the inner cities of America, we have created a welfare state for women and children and a police state for boys.

Superintendent Perzanoski used the word ‘pathology’ in his stirring letter to staff last month.  If there is such a thing as government pathology, the symptoms above describe it.  And eclipse anything PSPP had in mind.

The most obvious rule of social science is that people will abuse any free good. The price of "free" evokes unbounded demand while choking off supply. In the perverse feedback loops of "free," free health care comes to mean hypochondria, illness caused by needless exams and treatments, queues for an ever-expanding portfolio of mediocre services, and ultimately euthanasia under government bureaucracy.

The highlighted sentence just above is perhaps the most succinct and pithy explanation of the entitlement state and its ensuing fiscal death spiral we’ve ever encountered.

We hope you read the entire column.  We’ve truncated the paragraphs above, and in so doing, omitted far more wisdom.

We are in awe of the author’s ability to capture in very few words, relatively speaking, the problems we face, and the challenges in dealing with them.  We think you’ll find his insights worth your time.