Roy Miller
Phoenix AZ 85007
 

Can Hurricane Irene Actually Be Good For Us

Even though I confess to being a regular listener to National Public Radio it is sometimes a downright embarrassing experience. This week I had to listen to otherwise intelligent hosts ask their guests (albeit in somewhat rhetorical vein) whether Hurricane Irene might actually have been beneficial to the economy because of all the jobs that are being created for the cleanup and repair.

One host did confess that economist Frederic Bastiat had contested this stupid notion over 150 years ago in what is now commonly referred to as the “broken window fallacy.” This fallacy suggests that the benefit of a broken window is due to the fact that it creates a job when a glazer must be hired to repair it.

What Bastiat made clear, and what NPR hosts can’t seem to accept, is that the work of the glazer is the effect that is seen but there are many other unseen effects, such as where that money would have been spent if it had not gone to the glazer? Bastiat helped us understand that natural disasters and wars and similar events destroy wealth, rather than “creating jobs.” NPR needs to wake up and stop questioning such basic facts.