"Two items are noteworthy (besides his lifting my 'If you want less of something, tax it.' line)."
-- Barry Ritholtz, January 20th, 2010, referring to former Reagan Administration Office of Management and Budget Director, David Stockman, in The New York Times
The famous maxim, "If you want more of something, subsidize it. If you want less of something, tax it," has been circulating since before the time when Barry Ritholtz was perplexed in college, trying to figure out whether he was preparing to graduate or matriculate. The meanings of things elude him still, for which he supplies the appropriate expletives in proportion to the want of knowledge. At any rate, he's no more the author of it than he is of "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times."
This is an annoying sort of narcissism which usually emanates from New York intellectuals at The Times, but that's obviously not the case here. David Stockman is from Michigan, of course, just as Rush Limbaugh is from Missouri, whom Michael Savage routinely accuses of stealing lines. Must be something in the water, there in New York, that creates visions of grandeur from an early age.
The maxim, for what it's worth, is variously attributed to either Milton Friedman, Jack Kemp, or Ronald Reagan, but without chapter and verse. A little tough to nail down. I suspect it may predate them all. Ronald Reagan expresses the ideas explicitly in his farewell speech of 1989, but not in the identical language. Stockman, of course, knows the lines from that era, not from The Big Picture blog.
It just goes to show that the free for all of the internet is no substitute for publications vetted by the knowledgeable.
