Steven Landsburg on the economics of disaster relief:
Poor people, more than most, value cheap housing. A policy of disaster relief makes cheap housing hard to find. Therefore a policy of disaster relief is likely to impose a particular burden on the poor. If you want to help poor people, eliminating federal disaster relief is a good place to start.
Read the whole thing!
Landsburg's book, The Armchair Economist, is one of the first econ books I ever read and played a big role in helping me fall in love with economics. He just released a new book that seems to be getting quite a bit of attention for some reason...
(HT Instapundit)
2 comments:
The problem with authors like Landsburg is that they remind me of the pop psychology authors...sure, they have the "expert" credentials, but they craft books that are far from accurate in an attempt to create a catchy book to sell.
Just like the pop psychologists don't really go deep enough to give you the whole picture, so too do these pop economics books.
Thought,
Can you be more specific? Where do you think Landsburg is wrong in his analysis?
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