Editor,
I can’t help but think of Frederic Bastiat’s broken window fallacy when thinking about the apparent success of the Christmas market and the unresolved situation with the school system leaders on suspension. This theory posits that what is easy to measure is the seen (fixing a broken window provides a job to the window repairman), but what is hard to measure is the economic productivity that is lost because the window owner spent the money on a window rather than other productive items.
What would shoppers and taxpayers have spent money on if the Christmas market didn’t exist? On the other hand, with the superintendent and HR director, we see that student and teacher performance have probably not been impacted by their extended absences. Do those broken windows need to be replaced at all?
Eric Morris
Home Place (for a few more weeks)
