Day 27

Today we continued our newspaper assignment of finding an article and writing up a rough draft of an op-ed submission. For example, one student found an op-ed where a man is complaining that if states no longer have a monopoly on liquor stores then they will lose out on revenue. This could be an example of Bastiat's Seen/Unseen principle. What is seen is that the government will lose out on the immediate revenue. What is unseen are the new vendors that may come about as a result of the free entry/exit aspect of the market, with greater competition usually leading to lower prices, which given the Laffer curve argument may result in overall greater tax revenue. Not to mention the tax dollars that will be freed up from not having to run the liquor stores, run usually in a less efficient manner.

We wrapped up class with a documentary on the nation's debt crisis: Frontline's (PBS) Ten Trillion and Counting