Up and Coming Weekly is a weekly publication in Fayetteville, NC and Fort Bragg, NC area offering local news, views, arts, entertainment and community event and business information.
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Don't Overdose on Government by JOHN HOOD Do you take vitamins? You probably should. It ensures that even if you don't always don't doubt the value of vitamins at lower doses. maintain a varied and healthful diet, your body gets the baseline level of nutrients. The past two decades have produced an explosion of new research on the effects of But vitamins are worth taking only at normal doses. If you take three or four times government taxes and spending on economic growth. A key insight from these studies the recommended daily dose, you don't get three or four times as healthy. You just is that the question can't be answered by a simple yes or no. The right answer is often waste your money, give your bodily fluids an interesting hue and in "it depends." some cases risk a dangerous condition known as hypervitaminosis. If a given economy has no infrastructure to speak of, for example, In other words, there really can be too much of a good thing. The then building roads, bridges, ports, rail and water systems can concept has broad application. While buying a home is often a good have huge effects on productivity and thus on income growth, even investment, for example, some people go overboard, buy more house after subtracting the cost of the necessary taxes. But once you get than they need or can afford, lose income they would otherwise have to a certain level of infrastructure investment, only certain kinds received from alternative investments such as stocks and in extreme of additional investment are productive. Many projects end up cases go bankrupt. generating too little benefit to justify their cost. In public policy, the distinction between what is valuable on average The same can be said for other services traditionally monopolized and what is valuable at the margin often mirrors the distinction or dominated by state and local government, such as public safety and between progressives and conservatives. Take higher education. There public education. General increases in public budgets reach a point of is no question that, on average, college graduates receive hundreds of diminishing returns. That doesn't mean that continuous improvement thousands of dollars more in income over the course of their working Government, like vitamins, should in the quality of public services has no value. It does — but only if you lives than do those who lack college degrees. But this statistical fact achieve that higher quality by becoming more productive with existing be taken in reasonable doses. does not prove that sending additional people to college today would dollars. Otherwise, new dollars spent on public capital just means significantly boost their incomes or economic productivity in general. fewer dollars spent on more-productive private capital, as economists Most high school graduates who are likely to finish college with an incomeMelissa Yeoh and Dean Stansel demonstrate in a new Cato Journal study of local enhancing degree are already there or headed there. Other high school graduates economic growth patterns. who might be induced to go to college with additional tuition subsidies or lower Are we at the point of diminishing returns? Remember that all North Carolina admissions standards are unlikely to achieve the average result. That is, many will taxpayers are also federal taxpayers. Total government spending on current operations either fail out of college or pursue degrees in less-demanding fields with low rates of is now at a post-World War II high as a share of GDP. Moreover, a higher share of return in the job market. that spending is devoted to transfers — to Social Security, Medicare, More generally, when conservatives argue that adding new government programs Medicaid and other consumption subsidies rather than public is unlikely to generate sufficient benefits to offset the cost of the new taxes or debts investment — than ever before in the JOHN HOOD, Contributing Writer. necessarily to fund them, that does not mean that conservatives deny the value of history of the country. COMMENTS? Editor@upandcomgovernment as a whole. Doctors who counsel you not to overdo it on multivitamins That's not a vitamin. It's a poison pill. ingweekly.com Better Health presents THE 16TH ANNUAL EVENING AT THE THEATER A CABARET WITH What's going on in our community? We can help you learn what is happening in and around Fayetteville! In print and online! GEORGIA ROGERS FARMER Opening by Cassandra Vallery Saturday, March 23, 2013 7:00p.m. - 10:00p.m. Highland Country Club $85 Per Person www.BetterHealthCC.org 910•483•7534 Better Health has served our community for 54 years....bridging the gaps in healthcare by providing emergency financial assistance for medical needs, diabetes education programs, medical equipment loans, Eat Smart, Move More healthy lifestyle program and referral to health resources. Help us help our neighbors in need! 16 UCW MARCH 6-12, 2013 Look for it online now at www.upandcomingweekly.com. Connecting a Community 208 Rowan St. 910.484.6200 WWW.UPANDCOMINGWEEKLY.COM