"Lets have a $4,500 subsidy for everything!"

Jillian Bandes | August 03, 2009 10:30 AM

Excellent editorial today in the Wall Street Journal. Turns out that when you give people money instead of taking it from them, they're more inclined to conduct business -- theoretically spurring the economy. So why not give people $4,500 for everything? Because...

...this is crackpot economics. The subsidy won’t add to net national wealth, since it merely transfers money to one taxpayer’s pocket from someone else’s, and merely pays that taxpayer to destroy a perfectly serviceable asset in return for something he might have bought anyway.