August 2, 2005, on this blog: Unbribery Objection No. 2
Perhaps it is best, in order to evaluate any given policy on its merits, to bracket the question of any given politician’s personal financial stake in the matter. The question of who benefits and how much is, in this view, a distraction and a bit of a sideshow. We should keep our policy debates disinterested, abstract and exclusively on the merits of the ideas in question.
The problem with such an approach is that we’re talking about money. As in the clinking, clanking sound that makes the world go ’round. Money is never irrelevant.
Consider any abstract, disinterested discussion of tax legislation. Such discussions always include a consideration of what economists refer to as “incentives.” What they mean by that is money — money and the way that money influences the actions and behavior of people who reliably alter said behavior in order to get it or to avoid losing it. It seems strange to consider the powerful influence of such incentives on everyone except the politicians making the decisions that create them.
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