welfare

I cannot help but think that the growth “miracle” that is defined in David Romer has something to do with a growth in freedom.  I would not no how to prove this at this point, but as I continue to read I will be developing my thoughts on this point.  This leads the way to looking more deeply into the experiences of actual people during so call growth “disasters.”  It would be important for my thesis to isolate specific institutional changes where freedom was in a tangible way restricted.  A case study seems to be Argentina, where some anecdotal evidence would open up possible paths to research.

I must take a moment to examine why I think that the idea of growth is salvageable.  Thanks to lunch table discussions during my first semester at George Mason I have become convinced that the growth measures are not only suspect, but their very originating motive is suspect as well.  I will not go so far as to account this motive as large enough to warrant abandonment of the practice, but it remains important to take this lesson into account before starting on any study of welfare improvement.  Welfare improvement in its very essence is something of a theft, A.K.A. redistribution.  All political remedies for redistribution are by their very nature involuntary.  The normal market avenue of gift is subverted by the principle of redistribution, a nice word for theft.  If I am going to be convinced that this theft is absolutely necessary, I must more fully understand the welfare calculus.  It remains unclear to me how giving gifts to one segment of the population deemed most likely to grow at a high rate can be justified concurrently with the expense of expropriating property from another portion of people.  The return from this investment, if not large enough to solicit a private market, is suspect prima fascia.

I then begin to think that there must be some third party benefit.  There must be an actor who neither benefits monetarily, nor is compelled to give up monetary amounts, who never-the-less counts they themselves better off for living in a world where such transfers take place.  This is of course a concurrent story to the simple public choice analysis which states politicians seek to maximize their own benefit by engaging in the rent-seeking of public office.  It seems to hold true that the public would hardly stomach such avarice without being sold first the moral equivalent to “a spoonful of sugar.”

Yet maybe this cynical story has a silver lining.  The increase in welfare may actually occur.  This welfare almost surely involves some component of personal freedom.  I am not yet sure where I would get a clear definition of personal freedom, but it seems rooted in things looking very similar to what is loosely referred to as education.  Dr. Caplan in a lecture last evening stated that human capital has been shown to be a large component of wealth, widely measured.  Dispersing this improvement should then be quite relevant.  Whatever negative components are associated with how education has been historically delivered, it is hard to ignore the basic truth that ideas are impossible to chain.  This institution may in fact be created in the minds of people who presume to live in a world where justice is continually refined toward perfection.