Sowell on Hidden Costs of Gov't

Sowell on Hidden Costs of Gov't

Two excellent articles from Thomas Sowell, award-winning economist, on the hidden costs of Gov't regs.

Counting the costs

Government restrictions are attractive to people who want to impose their pet notions without having to count the costs. There may be estimated costs -- often disputed estimates -- but there is nothing to force those estimates to include all the things that will become more costly because of a given policy.

Nor is there anything to force the original estimates to bear any resemblance to the actual costs that end up being paid by the taxpayers and others.

In the marketplace, you can believe that every additional cost your decision creates is likely to show up in the price tag. . . .

The government can overlook all sorts of costs -- but those costs do not go away. There is no free lunch.

Counting the costs: Part II

Not so when it is the taxpayers' money or -- better yet -- money that business is forced to spend, which does not even show up on the government's budget.

One of the reasons costs do not get counted is that costs are often confused with prices. All the political noises being made about importing pharmaceutical drugs from Canada, or other schemes to reduce drug prices, do not face up to the 800-pound gorilla staring us in the face -- the $800 million it costs to develop a new drug.

You can control the price of drugs all you want, whether by imports from Canada or in numerous other ways, but if that $800 million is not covered, you are not going to keep getting new drugs created at the same pace. That's when sick people will pay the real cost in needless pain and preventable deaths.

But the politicians do not have to count any such costs, especially if those costs materialize only after the next election.