Because the author of a March 14 letter directed at my previous letter apparently cannot make his case — all he can do is repeat the same assertions that I have already pointed out as being logical fallacies — I, therefore, conclude that he is unable to defend them. He does seem eager to change the subject, however.

Case in point is his last letter where he thinks that you can grow an economy with win/lose economic transactions and by giving people money not to work. He states “If you give it (i.e. welfare) to the less fortunate …” Well, where does this “it” come from?

It was taken from someone who earned it and given to someone who didn’t earn it. It is a win/lose transaction because one party gets something he/she didn’t earn, and another party earned something they didn’t get. Liberals seem to think that an economy is a zero-sum game, where one person’s gain is another person’s loss. He suffers from the same malady that afflicts most liberals; the inability to think past a slogan that sounds good. Liberals do not consider tradeoffs or the ramifications of those slogans that sound good — until you think about them.

What the unsophisticated thinker sees is that the person receiving the welfare money has some money to spend (seems like a good thing). What is not considered by this unsophisticated thinker is the economic activity that would have taken place if the person who earned the money had not had it confiscated. The more sophisticated thinker sees beyond the immediate and realizes that the person who earned it in the first place would have spent it (creating its own demand) or invested it, thereby providing the means to create more jobs, and better-paying jobs (this is a good thing). But there is no free lunch here. It is one or the other, not both.

This principle was identified over 150 years ago by a brilliant French economist Fredric Bastiat in a treatise entitled “That Which is Seen, and That Which is Not Seen.” It is easily found on the Internet and I would suggest that the letter writer look it up and read it; he might learn something.

What grows an economy are win-win transactions. These transactions take place only because all parties to the transaction believe they will be better off after the transaction than before. When all parties win in a transaction, then the economy grows.

I would like to address one other rhetorical dishonesty that he used in his letter, and that is to refer to wealthy individuals as “fortunate.” Most of them achieved their wealth by working very hard. This is an attempt to diminish their achievements; this makes it acceptable in their minds to violate their rights by confiscating what they have rightfully earned.

 

George Lundstrom

Albert Lea