George Stigler - Benefits Quotes

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A proposed principle of legitimacy states that every action set by a legislature represents a social judgment that society is better off for that action. Thus all governmental policies are by hypothesis utility-increasing for the nation. Any costs of (say) a redistribution of income are less than the benefits. National output as presently measured can and usually will fall when a new redistribution of income is instituted, because it is costly to redistribute income. Is this trend in governmental policy likely to be reversed, perhaps by a general movement toward deregulation?

George Stigler
The state —the machinery and power of the state— is a potential resource or threat to every industry in the society. With its power to prohibit or compel, to take or give money, the state can and does selectively help or hurt a vast number of industries. That political juggernaut, the petroleum industry, is an immense consumer of political benefits, and simultaneously the underwriters of marine insurance have their more modest repast. The central tasks of the theory of economic regulation are to explain who will receive the benefits or burdens of regulation, what form regulation will take, and the effects of regulation upon the allocation of resources.

George Stigler
Regulation may be actively sought by an industry, or it may be thrust upon it. A central thesis of this paper is that, as a rule, regulation is acquired by the industry and is designed and operated primarily for its benefit. There are regulations whose net effects upon the regulated industry are undeniably onerous; a simple example is the differentially heavy taxation of the industry's product (whiskey, playing cards). These onerous regulations, however, are exceptional and can be explained by the same theory that explains beneficial (we may call it "acquired") regulation.

George Stigler
A useful role exists for the economist is making calculations of the prospective costs and/or benefits of alternative policies. This role is precisely the one Keynes had in mind, I assume, when he expressed the hope that we would become useful after the fashion of dentists.

George Stigler