Tom Toles: Simplicity itself

[n2doc]

Simplicity itself

If somebody loses his job and doesn't have enough money for a place to live and ends up sleeping outdoors and gets sick and has no health insurance and dies, is that the efficiency of the market at work? It certainly is, and if you think that whatever outcomes the market delivers are the efficient ones, and that's your scale of measuring the "fair" distribution of goods and services in an economy, well, then, things are, in fact, as simple as you would like them to be.

It will be simplicity itself to get the deficit under control if we just get rid of Medicare and Medicaid and Social Security all at once. I mean really easy. The market doesn't need them or care about them. Why should you? Because that might impact you and people you know? Hey, time to make the tough choices, pal! The deficit was what you said you were frantic about, so let's have at it.

Simplicity has been the snake oil in the political discourse for some time now. Technology is allowed to get more complex by the second, but the social/government part of modern life is supposed to regress to hunter-gatherer times, when the magic of the marketplace was actual spells and incantations. Halloween and Election Day go hand-in-hand. Let's go dabbling into the magic! -Tom Toles

This is
:sarcasm: if you missed it...

[EC]

1. I remember when the owner of American Motors (Chrysler)now

I think it was Charles Nash...was commended and even won an award for good business - because he kept the line running even while a man had his arm caught in the conveyor belt - the guy had his arm cut off - but hey, the line kept running...

[mdmc]

2. how could one miss the

sarcasm?