Economics made easy

A hat tip to Ben Cunningham for pointing toward this column by the great Thomas Sowell. (Rush Limbaugh always says that if he didn’t have his own brain, he would want Antonin Scalia’s. I, on the other hand, would want Thomas Sowell’s.)

1. If we cannot afford to pay for doctors, hospitals and pharmaceutical drugs now, how can we afford to pay for doctors, hospitals and pharmaceutical drugs, in addition to a new federal bureaucracy to administer a government-run medical system?

2. Economics and politics confront the same fundamental problem: What everyone wants adds up to more than there is. Market economies deal with this problem by confronting individuals with the costs of producing what they want, and letting those individuals make their own trade-offs when presented with prices that convey those costs. That leads to self-rationing, in the light of each individual’s own circumstances and preferences.

Politics deals with the same problem by making promises that cannot be kept, or which can be kept only by creating other problems that cannot be acknowledged when the promises are made.

That’s so easy that only a politician couldn’t understand it.