{"id":1871,"date":"2009-09-17T13:51:47","date_gmt":"2009-09-17T21:51:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/hodakvalue.com\/blog\/?p=1871"},"modified":"2009-09-17T14:10:40","modified_gmt":"2009-09-17T22:10:40","slug":"violent-criminals-long-term-welfare-recipients-the-chronically-sick-and-politicians","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/hodakvalue.com\/blog\/violent-criminals-long-term-welfare-recipients-the-chronically-sick-and-politicians\/","title":{"rendered":"&#8220;Violent criminals, long-term welfare recipients, the chronically sick, and politicians&#8221;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>What do these people have in common?\u00a0 According to <a href=\"http:\/\/econlog.econlib.org\/archives\/2009\/09\/the_expected_hu.html\">Bryan Caplan<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><em>Check whether the marginal human is, over his entire lifetime, self-supporting in present value terms.\u00a0 A small fraction of people &#8211; such as violent criminals, long-term welfare recipients, the chronically sick, and politicians &#8211; probably don&#8217;t pass this test.\u00a0 But even people who earn minimum wage probably do.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Unfortunately, &#8220;present value&#8221; is a term that is alien to most people, which makes them more likely to fall for the value-destroying programs of the politicians.<\/p>\n<p>Caplan&#8217;s wit may have been inspired by Mel Brooks<\/p>\n<p><object width=\"425\" height=\"344\" data=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/v\/Km7WD8wkb1c&amp;hl=en&amp;fs=1&amp;\" type=\"application\/x-shockwave-flash\"><param name=\"allowFullScreen\" value=\"true\" \/><param name=\"allowscriptaccess\" value=\"always\" \/><param name=\"src\" value=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/v\/Km7WD8wkb1c&amp;hl=en&amp;fs=1&amp;\" \/><param name=\"allowfullscreen\" value=\"true\" \/><\/object><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>What do these people have in common?\u00a0 According to Bryan Caplan: Check whether the marginal human is, over his entire lifetime, self-supporting in present value terms.\u00a0 A small fraction of people &#8211; such as violent criminals, long-term welfare recipients, the chronically sick, and politicians &#8211; probably don&#8217;t pass this test.\u00a0 But even people who earn [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[50],"class_list":["post-1871","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economics","tag-methodists"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/hodakvalue.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1871","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/hodakvalue.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/hodakvalue.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/hodakvalue.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/hodakvalue.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1871"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"http:\/\/hodakvalue.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1871\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1883,"href":"http:\/\/hodakvalue.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1871\/revisions\/1883"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/hodakvalue.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1871"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/hodakvalue.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1871"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/hodakvalue.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1871"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}