In economics, there is a concept called Pareto efficiency which simply means that no one can be made better off without making someone else worse off. For example, if you have a banana and I have an apple, but you would prefer to eat an apple and I would prefer to eat a banana, it would be a Pareto improvement for us to trade. If there is only one orange that I have and we both want, me giving you the half of the orange is not a Pareto improvement because I was made worse off by the transaction.
I bring this up because many people seem to be talking about funding drug free prom parties with money taken from drug dealers as a Pareto improvement. Hey, let's use this free money which basically fell from the sky and didn't come from taxpayers to pay for drug free prom parties which keep kids safe, right?
On the Kojo Nnmandi show that was recorded yesterday, Ken Ulman mentioned that those funds are earmarked to be used for drug and alcohol treatment and related programs. So basically, those prom parties were paid for by cutting resources available to help drug addicts and alcoholics recover. Taking that money away from people who need some help to return to society as productive members and giving it to rich kids who just spent hundreds of dollars on dresses, tuxedos and limos (which they probably got drunk/stoned and had sex in on the way to the prom hehe) is not the best use of those funds in my opinion. But parents are a concentrated interest with a great deal of political power, so they get the resources and not the drug addicts who need some help to get back on their feet.
Taking from the poor and giving to the rich. Ken Ulman, you are certainly not Robin Hood.
Saturday, March 13, 2010
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
4 comments:
Or, legalize all of it, funnel the taxed portion of drug revenue through government and allocate it in various ways.
Tomato/Tomaaaaaaaaato
You are Howard County's Andy Rooney.
Anon, don't willfully try to be a moron. I DO support legalization of drugs. The point of this post was simply that the money stolen from drug dealers could be put to uses other than prom parties. Pay attention to what I wrote- not what your twisted mind thinks I wrote.
9:33 here...there is a benefit to having commenters who do not always agree with what you say. Yes, I should have read down a few posts re: your thoughts on legalization, but I didn't.
Please accept my humble apology.
No problem. I think Andy Rooney is the biggest idiot ever, so I didn't appreciate the comparison. Otherwise critical comments are what makes blogging fun, so I welcome yours anytime.
Post a Comment