Posted on 08/24/2011 7:10:56 AM PDT by Biggirl
As the President gets ready to propose yet another stimulus I thought it might be nice to review a centuries old retort to government spending as a solution to economic ills called “the broken window fallacy”. First proposed by 19th century Frederic Bastiat a French classical liberal theorist, political economist. It’s a short video but one worth watching and remembering when a neo-liberal proposes more government spending.
This video was assembled by Sam Selikoff, an economic student at Boston College. Here is his blog. He writes:
As an amateur Austrian economist, I often find it difficult to clearly and concisely explain differences in first principles to people who have been trained as mainstream economists. Austrian economics notably devotes much more time and energy to elaborating the philosophical fundamentals of economic science than mainstream and neoclassical economics does, and this may partially explain why talking about first principles with a mainstream economist often leads nowhere.
Wikipedia defines Austrian Economics as:
The Austrian School is a heterodoxschool of economic thought that emphasizes the spontaneous organizing power of the price mechanism.[citation needed] Its name derives from the identity of its founders and early supporters, who were citizens of the old AustrianHabsburg Empire, including Carl Menger, Eugen von Böhm-Bawerk, Ludwig von Mises, and Nobel laureateFriedrich Hayek.[1] Currently, adherents of the Austrian School can come from any part of the world, but they are often referred to simply as Austrian economists and their work as Austrian economics. They generally advocate a laissez faire approach to the economy.[2]
Criticized by both the left and the right including Paul Krugman and Milton Friedman, it is considered outside the mainstream, but then it is well worth knowing. At any rate here is the broken window fallacy.
Not to be confused with the “broken window theory of policing” which is (a) quite different; (b) quite valid.
Excellent.
Nobody recognizes the loss to who pays for the window, and where/how those resources would have been otherwise more efficiently spent.
Of course, if nobody has to live within a budget and trade the something else for the window repair then their theory is intact, like printing money.
So the broken window stimulus advocate should also advocate we all print our own money as well.
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