Government, intentions and results

A bar in my neighborhood

Last week Don Boudreaux sent the following letter to The New York Times:

Writing about health-care, Paul Krugman asserts that “conservatives … don’t want Americans to have universal coverage” (”The Defining Moment,” Oct. 30).

Among the earliest lessons that I teach my freshman economics students are (1) intentions are not results, and (2) to oppose a government program is not necessarily to object to the intentions stated by that program’s advocates.

Paul Krugman obviously teaches his students differently, for he clearly believes that (1) if government intends for Americans to have universal health coverage, then the result will be that Americans actually get universal health coverage, and (2) anyone who opposes a government program promising universal health coverage is a person who objects to Americans actually getting universal health coverage.

Mr. Krugman’s reasoning is evidence that he’s forgotten some of the most foundational lessons of economics. Pity his students.

Indeed, far too many people equate government spending and programs with compassion. The logic behind such sentiment is straightforward: if people lack something, and the government spends money on it, their problem will be resolved. Consequently anyone who opposes such expenditures can only be motivated by greed, disdain or an extreme form of schadenfreude. It's a sentiment that many of the left have actively promoted.

After all, if they were to concede that their ideological opponents actually shared their concerns but simply favor an alternate means of achieving the desired outcome, it undermines their own favored approach. Successfully asserting not only the logical supremacy of your argument, but also the moral component, is more than half the battle in prevailing.

What belies this line of reasoning, however, is evidence and reality. Greater government involvement and spending in education has produced disaster. Government-built housing is synonymous with social disorder while welfare has met with similar deleterious consequences, many of which were at least partly alleviated when such programs were scaled back in the 1990s. Beyond spending, regulations intended to help consumers almost invariably achieve the opposite. Is it any coincidence that two of our industrial sectors with the greatest regulation -- finance and health care -- are also two of the most problematic?

In order for an honest and productive debate to take place in this country, we have to get beyond the idea that intentions are equivalent to outcomes. More government is not the same as compassion and in fact has a dismal record of achieving stated goals. The arguments of those who advocate smaller government are superior in theory and confirmed by reality. At present we can chalk up past government failures as expensive lessons, but left unheeded they are simply a waste.