The Reality of Politics

Cafe Hayek ^ | January 22, 2010 | Don Boudreaux

[1rudeboy]

Lamenting that Democratic politicians up and down Pennsylvania Avenue have lost their enthusiasm for radical health-care ‘reform,’ Paul Krugman today maintains that “politics is supposed to be about achieving something more than your own re-election.”

This notion of politics is absurdly unrealistic. Public-choice economics – pioneered by my colleagues Jim Buchanan (who boasts his own Nobel Prize) and Gordon Tullock – uncovers overwhelming evidence that politics, in fact, almost exclusively is about achieving election and re-election. So to insist that politics should be about something other than what it is really about makes as much sense as insisting, say, that snow should be hot or that donkeys should be bipedal.

He is We?

by Don Boudreaux on January 22, 2010

Here’s a letter that I sent this morning to the New York Times:

Paul Krugman wants the House to pass the Senate’s current health-care bill because “the nation is waiting” (“Do the Right Thing,” Jan. 22).

Ummm…. no. Polls show that health-care ‘reform’ of the sort the Senate passed is now overwhelmingly unpopular. Indeed, as Scott Brown’s victory makes clear, it’s unpopular even in Massachusetts – perhaps the most ‘Progressive’ state in the union. And the President and members of the House obviously believe these polls, otherwise they wouldn’t have so quickly run away from the Senate bill.

For Mr. Krugman nevertheless to insist that “the nation is waiting” for final legislative approval of this ‘reform’ reveals that Mr. Krugman’s arrogance has reached such Brobdingnagian proportions that he mistakes his own desires for those of the American public.

Sincerely,
Donald J. Boudreaux

[1rudeboy]

Here is more on public choice theory, for those interested:

The New PC [Free Republic].