Links - Pithy Recent Quotables That Caught My Eye

Wisdom in small bites

The theme today is envy and its discontents.

Allison Schrager commenting on the Mamdani tax plan:

I know this may seem small compared with everything else at stake in economic policy, including a four-year rent freeze on private property. But the fact that if you earn $1 more than $999,999 you’d owe $20,000 is just amateurish tax design — like something an eighth grader would come up with. It points to outright economic illiteracy — or that no one with even a passing familiarity with tax policy reviewed it.

Michael Munger arguing that government spending austerity is a myth:

My point is more than simple pedantry. While it is annoying to hear the false “austerity narrative” constantly repeated as Progressive gospel, the real problem is the policy implication. If we permit the “austerity cuts caused poverty, we need to spend more!” fable to become the stylized fact on which policy is based, we will not only be thinking of the wrong solution, but we’ll be working from a false history.

Arnold Kling discussing the problem with solutions to the real and supposed problems of extreme wealth:

Philanthropy, as opposed to charity, means giving to a cause, not to a community. I dislike philanthropy, as I have said before.

People assume that because non-profits do not seek profits, their intentions are good. And good intentions are sufficient to make them morally superior to profit-seeking enterprises. The intention heuristic ignores the possibility that the outcomes of profit-seeking businesses can be—and often are—more socially beneficial than the outcomes of nonprofits. We should evaluate enterprises based on outcomes, not on intentions.

Then there is the issue of accountability. A profit-seeking business is ultimately accountable to customers, who are in the best position to gauge the value of what the business provides. If customers do not pay more than the cost of what the firm provides, the firm loses money and goes out of business. In contrast, a nonprofit only has to keep its donors happy. If the services it provides are not worth the cost, it can continue to operate by maintaining good relationships between the executives of the nonprofit and the providers of funding.

A lot of supposed public goods turn out to be public bads. Take higher education. Please. Or government’s propensity to subsidize demand and restrict supply, turning health care, education, and housing into never-ending crises.

The theme of his post is “all men are created equal” and it is full of pithy quotables. Writing at the time in the season of generosity (both virtue-signaling intentionality and true giving), the case Kling makes is quite apropos.