Odds and Ends

On Friday a headline in the Arizona Republic said "Stimulus Saves 50 SRP Jobs" and goes on to tell us how the money was used to employ 50 people that would have been laid off otherwise. I don't know the amount of money spent per job saved, but that actually misses the point. Bastiat's broken window fallacy applies here: how many jobs that would have occurred in other sectors of the economy were destroyed due to the government taxes needed to send stimulus money to SRP? And, these jobs would have been preferred to the SRP jobs. How do I know that -- because if people had been allowed to keep their tax money, they would not have spent it on the SRP jobs, most likely.

As I stated earlier, this is a great time for Arizona to create policies that will attract businesses from California. Already, multi-billion dollar facilities that would have been built in California by a private firm are being constructed in Oregon and North Carolina. I sent an open letter to Jan Brewer via the Arizona Republic on this issue but the Republic disagreedd with what I was saying and did not run it. I will send a direct letter to both Governor Brewer and Russ Pearce. According to today's Republic, the state faces more than 1.5 billion dollars in unfunded liabilities. Not only must the defined benefit programs be turned into defined contribution programs, but all prograqms must be decreased. But, most importantly, Arizona must create an environment in which people want to invest and do business here.