As Americans approach another even-year trip to the polls, those currently running and those positioning themselves for 2020 are revealing their vast ignorance in how they would “fix” what they think are our core problems. The many free lunches (or more accurately, stolen lunches) they promise, all the way up to multi-trillion dollar utopian health care boondoggles-in-waiting, show that few know enough to pass an economics principles course, much less to advance Americans’ general welfare.
While some words passing beltway lips make sense (e.g., recognizing burdens from regulation), many fail to understand opportunity cost (e.g., free college and paid leave), comparative advantage (e.g., protectionism), that market incomes are earned by benefitting others (e.g., making “the rich” pay more), not to mention the roles of property rights and profits and the markets for labor and capital, and far more.
But why does the snake oil offered by political candidates prevail so often electorally, compared to similar nonsense where people are free to make their own decisions? Thomas Sowell, in Knowledge and Decisions, provided insights we should consider before we vote.
In market competition:
Economic knowledge need not be articulated to the consumer, but is conveyed… in the prices and qualities of goods. The consumer may have no idea at all—or even a wrong idea—as to why one product cost less and serves his purpose better; all he needs is that end result itself…better and more accurate knowledge on the part of the producer is a decisive competitive advantage, regardless of whether the consumer shares any part of the knowledge.
In…
