Washington, DC and the broken window

I’ve been out of the action this week at the annual State Policy Network meeting. Think tank leaders from all 50 states are here and we’re talking policy ideas and exchanging successes and failures. Lots of people from DC are still reeling from the earthquake and now see a hurricane bearing down on their homes.

Thankfully, we in New Mexico are relatively free from natural disasters. And, despite Paul Krugaman’s view that what America needs is an alien attack, the fact is that the Broken Window fallacy still holds. Natural disasters (or unnatural ones for that matter) are bad. Read more on the topic and the recent dust-up on the issue over at Reason.