The Broken Window Fallacy Reapplied

It is not a good thing to destroy wealth. Bastiat puts it this way: “Society loses the value of things which are uselessly destroyed.” It sounds like an unexceptional claim. But herein rests the core case against everything the government does. Perhaps, then, we can see why the allegory is not better known. If we took it seriously, we would dismantle the whole apparatus of American economic intervention. If you are with me to this point, perhaps you have a hard time believing that anyone really believes that wealth destruction is actually a good thing. Let me try to show that the fallacy is as pervasive as ever. FULL ARTICLE