From Jeffrey Dorfman writing at Forbes:
10 Essential Economic Truths Liberals Need to Learn
-
- Government cannot create wealth, jobs, or income. Because government has to take money from somebody before it can spend it, there is no economic gain from anything the government does.
- Income inequality does not affect the economy.
- Low wages are not corporate exploitation. In a free country, people voluntarily accept employment, so all workers believe their current job to be the best choice from among their opportunity set.
- Environmental over-regulation is a regressive tax that falls hardest on the poor.
- Education is not a public good.
- High CEO pay is no worse than high pay to athletes or movie stars.
- Consumer spending is not what drives the economy.
- When government provides things for free, they will end up being low quality, cost more than they should, and may disappear when most needed
- Government cannot correct cosmic injustice.
- There is no such thing as a free lunch.
Much more at the site. Who is Jeffrey?
I am a professor of economics at The University of Georgia and consultant on economic issues to a variety of corporations and local governments. Taking a generally free market, libertarian perspective, I use economics as the lens to analyze government policies from the local to the international level. I have a particular focus on government policies that strive to redistribute income or wealth either openly or in indirect ways. A lot of those thoughts are collected in my e-book, Ending the Era of the Free Lunch.
Leave a comment