Commentary from the liberterrain...
Becky Akers' entertaining rant "The Drip, The Perv, and Their Dog-and-Pony Show" ripping no-nothing Senators and their corporatist cronies contained one particularly interesting paragraph that Akers didn't dwell on but which the Libertarian News Examiner considers eminently dwell-worthy.
This paragraph follows descriptions of the TSA's deleterious affects on air travel during a Senate hearing:
Perhaps that's why "a 2008 survey of air travelers who took one or more flights in the previous year found that one in four respondents (28 percent) avoided at least one trip because of the hassles of air travel, which include aviation congestion and passenger screening," testified Roger Dow, president of the US Travel Association. "That loss of travel translates into a $26.5 billion dollar loss to the U.S. economy … Compare that … to a 2010 survey conducted by Consensus Research, which found that American travelers would take an additional two to three flights per year if the hassles in security screening were eliminated. These additional flights would add nearly $85 billion in consumer spending and support 900,000 American jobs."
How exactly did "the U.S. economy" lose $26.5 billion dollars?
Did $26.5 billion waft up into the stratosphere and dissipate into outer space? Was it flushed down a million toilets? Burned in a bonfire?
No, "the US economy" did not lose $26.5 billion. The air travel industry lost $26.5 billion. People simply spent that same $26.5 billion on other things "in the US economy" instead of spending it on air travel, that's all.
Maybe it was spent on gasoline for car travel. Or brown bag lunches munched while staying at work and video conferencing. Or foregoing vacations and watching Red Box movies at home. Or mailing birthday cards stuffed with Abe Lincolns to the grandkids instead of visiting the little dears.
Then consider the last sentence: "These additional flights would add nearly $85 billion in consumer spending and support 900,000 American jobs."
But if the entire $85 billion was spent for other things instead of air travel, like gasoline or video rentals and birthday cards and lunchmeat and Twinkies, that $85 billion was spent "in the US economy."
These statist-corporatists seem smart enough to clearly see the airline's losses but not other business's gains.
Libertarians who have read Frederic Bastiat have detected that That Which is Seen, and That Which is Not Seen is alive and well on Crapitol Hill.
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