OPINION/COMMENTARY

'The Two Things About Economics'

To call in these pages for an increase in government spending is heresy but before you start to prepare the stake and the burning brands allow me to point out that the costs will be minimal and the long term savings immense. I propose that every bureaucrat dealing with environmental policies and regulations be supplied with a small sign upon which will be printed "The Two Things About Economics".

"Two Things" is a mind game recently popularized by Glenn Whitman, an economics professor, in which you have to distill a complex subject or profession down to two droplets of pure wisdom. Glenn's own version of economics is:

"Two Things about economics. One: Incentives matter. Two: There's no such thing as a free lunch."....