BILLIONS WASTED

In his book Free to Choose, Milton Friedman describes four degrees of relative conscientiousness exhibited by people when spending money. When they spend their own money on themselves, they are mindful of their needs and endeavor to maximize the value of the dollars spent. When they spend their own money on someone else, they tend to be less mindful of the content of the purchase but quite mindful about the amount being spent. When they spend someone else’s money on themselves, they tend to be less scrupulous and perhaps even extravagant, but when they spend someone else’s money on someone else, they tend not to be concerned with the money at all. Friedman teaches that government spending is in this fourth category (spending someone else’s money, taxpayers, on someone else, special interests). It should come as no surprise, then, that our enormous government, the largest and most expensive in the world, wastes billions of dollars every year. It may come as a surprise, however, that the waste is so obvious, yet no one is acting to stop it.

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