It's too bad that "Government Choice Theory" was misnamed as "Public Choice Theory". Despite the fig leaf of public elections or representatives, it is the human representatives & human bureaucrats who make decisions. All of which have some good and bad, or desirable and undesirable results.
The "market" is the aggregate of what the public, with limited budgets, is willing to buy -- and the producers are willing to make. It is mostly govt stopping people as producers from making what buyers are willing to buy that cause econ problems called market failure--as housing shows.
Tho I'm pretty sure Detroit & Compton, tho maybe not Harlem, have pretty affordable housing -- yet few families want to move there because of ... lifestyle choices of neighbors. (Which many think are because of govt failures, tho often disagree on what the govt failure was.)
Tho the basic failure is the desire of so many people, especially most rich & educated, for a Free Lunch -- which they understand to mean "somebody else pays for it".
Markets cannot fail, since a market is simply two individuals freely transacting. Aggregations of those individuals may produce results others don't like, but things I don't like isn't "failure". And far too often, markets doing exactly what they ought to do - high house prices for example, are cited as failure. But high prices are information, telling us where we should shift resources to, information that tells us there is demand that is not being met.
I regularly challenge my liberal friends to cite a liberal program that works. The silence has been deafening. Some have tossed out Social Security (in part, because I am drawing SS), to which I ask if they have ever heard of the "time value of money". Again, silence.
Absent any answer, a common response has been to answer a question with a question: what conservative programs have worked? I cite, typically in this order; 1) tax cuts to spur economic growth; 2) welfare reform, the primary driver of balanced budgets a quarter century ago; and 3) military strength, as in parabellum.
It's too bad that "Government Choice Theory" was misnamed as "Public Choice Theory". Despite the fig leaf of public elections or representatives, it is the human representatives & human bureaucrats who make decisions. All of which have some good and bad, or desirable and undesirable results.
The "market" is the aggregate of what the public, with limited budgets, is willing to buy -- and the producers are willing to make. It is mostly govt stopping people as producers from making what buyers are willing to buy that cause econ problems called market failure--as housing shows.
Tho I'm pretty sure Detroit & Compton, tho maybe not Harlem, have pretty affordable housing -- yet few families want to move there because of ... lifestyle choices of neighbors. (Which many think are because of govt failures, tho often disagree on what the govt failure was.)
Tho the basic failure is the desire of so many people, especially most rich & educated, for a Free Lunch -- which they understand to mean "somebody else pays for it".
Markets cannot fail, since a market is simply two individuals freely transacting. Aggregations of those individuals may produce results others don't like, but things I don't like isn't "failure". And far too often, markets doing exactly what they ought to do - high house prices for example, are cited as failure. But high prices are information, telling us where we should shift resources to, information that tells us there is demand that is not being met.
I regularly challenge my liberal friends to cite a liberal program that works. The silence has been deafening. Some have tossed out Social Security (in part, because I am drawing SS), to which I ask if they have ever heard of the "time value of money". Again, silence.
Absent any answer, a common response has been to answer a question with a question: what conservative programs have worked? I cite, typically in this order; 1) tax cuts to spur economic growth; 2) welfare reform, the primary driver of balanced budgets a quarter century ago; and 3) military strength, as in parabellum.
Government involvement is behind most of our problems.
Certainly many of them and certainly when it gets involved it often makes things worse.