Category: Economics

Is a Small Amount of Money More Valuable to a Low Income Person than to a High Income Person?

I answered this question over at Quora. Just about all the other answers were wrong, so I thought I’d set things straight.

No. Value is not a quantity. It cannot be compared across individuals, so we cannot say that $50 is more valuable to person A than to person B.

To understand value, you must understand action. To act is to select one thing and set aside another. Thus, an ability to evaluate one thing over another is a necessary prerequisite to action, one that all mentally functioning humans possess. Valuation is always a comparison between two alternatives. It is a comparison made in the mind of an acting human.

Because the high income person and the low income person are different individuals, their valuations cannot be compared. We could say something like, “the low income person values an hour of his time less than $50, while the high income person values an hour of his time more than $50.” But this does not mean the low income person values $50 more than the high income person does in any absolute sense, because an hour of time is not the same to different individuals.

Some people have said that the answer is yes because marginal utility decreases with quantity. This is a misinterpretation. It is true that people tend to value additional units of a stock of interchangeable consumer goods less with each additional unit. This is because a person will use the first unit of the good to satisfy his highest unmet need, the second unit to satisfy his second highest unmet need, the third unit to satisfy his third highest unmet need, and so on. Thus, marginal utility does decrease with quantity. But it only meaningfully decreases with respect to other goods! If I have five dumplings, I might value an additional dumpling more than a battery, but if I have six or more dumplings I might value the battery more than an additional dumpling.

While I value things less with each additional unit, we can’t take this to mean my valuation of my total wealth must decrease as I grow wealthier. Total wealth comprises everything, leaving nothing to compare it against, so valuation is meaningless.

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On the Political Economy of Native Tribes

TSLEIL-WAUTUTH NATION - Squamish & Tsleil-Waututh Nations

My latest Mises Canada post is all about Native tribes:

Ludwig von Mises wrote that, “[d]emocratic control is budgetary control. The government has but one source of revenue—taxes. … But if the government has other sources of income it can free itself from this control.”[1] This principle is particularly important for understanding the internal politics of Canadian Native tribes, whose governments are the recipients of large transfers from the Canadian federal government.

A recent scandal involving the Squamish Nation, a Vancouver-area tribe with a population of about 4,000, is a case in point. Two political officials of the band spent $1.5 million from an emergency fund for their personal ends. According to the investigation that eventually exposed them, “it was clear they handed out funds to develop political support from members.” [2] The scandal derives from the fact that funds earmarked for one purpose, emergencies, were used for a different purpose. But the interesting economic story would nonetheless hold if the funds had been used only for their intended purposes.

According to its most recent financial statements,[3] the Squamish Nation earned $11.3 million from Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development Canada, i.e. the Canadian Federal Government, and only $8.4 million from taxation in 2014. As Mises suggests in the quote above, a government with alternative sources of income besides taxation can use this income to free itself from democratic control. Robbing Peter to pay Paul is a favourite activity of all governments, but when the robbery occurs through taxation, it is at least limited by Paul’s awareness that he is being robbed.

Go read the rest at Mises Canada.

The post On the Political Economy of Native Tribes appeared first on The Economics Detective.

On the Political Economy of Native Tribes

My latest Mises Canada post is all about Native tribes:

Ludwig von Mises wrote that, “[d]emocratic control is budgetary control. The government has but one source of revenue—taxes. … But if the government has other sources of income it can free itself from this control.”[1] This principle is particularly important for understanding the internal politics of Canadian Native tribes, whose governments are the recipients of large transfers from the Canadian federal government.

A recent scandal involving the Squamish Nation, a Vancouver-area tribe with a population of about 4,000, is a case in point. Two political officials of the band spent $1.5 million from an emergency fund for their personal ends. According to the investigation that eventually exposed them, “it was clear they handed out funds to develop political support from members.” [2] The scandal derives from the fact that funds earmarked for one purpose, emergencies, were used for a different purpose. But the interesting economic story would nonetheless hold if the funds had been used only for their intended purposes.

According to its most recent financial statements,[3] the Squamish Nation earned $11.3 million from Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development Canada, i.e. the Canadian Federal Government, and only $8.4 million from taxation in 2014. As Mises suggests in the quote above, a government with alternative sources of income besides taxation can use this income to free itself from democratic control. Robbing Peter to pay Paul is a favourite activity of all governments, but when the robbery occurs through taxation, it is at least limited by Paul’s awareness that he is being robbed.

Go read the rest at Mises Canada.

The post On the Political Economy of Native Tribes appeared first on The Economics Detective.