Wednesday, November 18, 2009

Why Free Lunch Policies Sells

Free lunch programs are usually best sellers. Why? Because interest groups benefit from it.

In the case of the US, according to
mint.com, 47% have ZERO income tax liability in 2009 while 27% will shoulder the burden for the redistribution.

While it is easy to see the numbers and think about noble goals, what is usually missed is that taxes have been punishing the most productive economic agents whom contributes to the gist of the nation's economic growth...to the benefit of the non-productive actors.

Such redistribution leaves a big segment of the population dependent on welfare and vulnerable to scheming political actors.



As Dr Richard Ebeling recently wrote,

``a number of economists, such as Nobel Laureate, James Buchanan, have taught us that the actual politics of government intervention and redistribution has little to do with high-minded notions concerning some hypothetical "public good" or "general interest." The reality of democratic politics is that politicians want campaign contributions and votes to be elected and reelected, and they offer in exchange other people's money. Those who supply those campaign contributions and votes want the money of those others, which they are not able to honestly earn through the free play of open competition in the market place.


``The bias in the democratic process toward political plunder is due to what is called a “concentration of benefits and a diffusion of burdens” that results from various government interventions.

No comments: