{"id":25130,"date":"2017-09-01T15:58:42","date_gmt":"2017-09-01T20:58:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=25130"},"modified":"2017-09-01T15:58:42","modified_gmt":"2017-09-01T20:58:42","slug":"weekend-reading-harvey-the-broken-window-fallacy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=25130","title":{"rendered":"Weekend Reading: Harvey & The Broken Window Fallacy"},"content":{"rendered":"

Weekend Reading: Harvey & The Broken Window Fallacy<\/a><\/h3>\n
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As the waters recede from \u201cHurricane Harvey,\u201d<\/em> the rebuilding efforts begin. It will take quite some time before Houston fully recovers from the tragedy, but recover we will. Hopefully, lessons were learned by a city government that has avoided dealing with the drainage and flooding problems for far too long. Despite hundreds of millions of dollars extracted from the citizenry of Houston via a \u201crain tax,\u201d<\/em>\u00a0the money was absorbed by the profligate spending of repeated feckless Mayors who chose to spend on \u201cbike trails,\u201d<\/em>\u00a0\u201cgreen energy.\u201d<\/em>\u00a0and other liberal agendas rather than resolving a critical issue that has plagued Houston for years.<\/strong><\/p>\n

We\u2019ll see. But I won\u2019t hold my breath as Houston continues to follow the shining examples of other fiscally responsible governments like Chicago, Detroit, and others. [sarcasm alert]<\/em><\/p>\n

But that is a story for another day.<\/p>\n

Currently, the mainstream story is the \u201ceconomic boost\u201d<\/em> which will come from the recovery process. This is the essence of the \u201cBroken Window Fallacy.\u201d\u00a0<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cA window is destroyed, therefore the window has to be replaced which leads to economic activity throughout the economy.<\/em><\/p>\n

However, the fallacy of the \u2018broken window\u2019\u00a0narrative is that\u00a0economic activity is only changed<\/strong>\u00a0and not increased.\u00a0The dollars used to pay for the window can no longer be used for their original intended purpose.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

There is no free lunch.\u201d<\/strong><\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

To put a finer point on it:<\/p>\n

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\u201cIf natural disasters are such a good deal for the economy, why wait for Acts of God to come along? Why not nuke?\u00a0https:\/\/t.co\/nc5WBUVzKW<\/a><\/p>\n

\u2014 Real Investment News (@RINonAir) August 29, 2017<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

She is right. Obviously, nuking cities to create economic growth is just plain silly.<\/p>\n

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Weekend Reading: Harvey & The Broken Window Fallacy As the waters recede from \u201cHurricane Harvey,\u201d the rebuilding efforts begin. It will take quite some time before Houston fully recovers from the tragedy, but recover we will. Hopefully, lessons were learned by a city government that has avoided dealing with the drainage and flooding problems for […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,4],"tags":[13312,15724,8511,15470],"class_list":["post-25130","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economics","category-environment","tag-broken-window-fallacy","tag-hurricane-harvey","tag-lance-roberts","tag-real-investment-advice"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25130","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=25130"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25130\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":25131,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25130\/revisions\/25131"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=25130"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=25130"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=25130"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}