Rather, the problem is that any individual merchant’s sign won’t be noticed unless it’s bigger and more garish than those of rival merchants.
BOB FRANKThe upshot is that to send its children to a school of even average quality, a family must outbid half of other similar families who are pursuing the same goal.
More Bob Frank Quotes
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In the long run, greater investment would mean greater productivity and income growth.
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The upshot is that to send its children to a school of even average quality, a family must outbid half of other similar families who are pursuing the same goal.
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(We’d think ill of any parent whose aspirations were lower.) The rub is that the best schools tend to be located in more expensive neighborhoods.
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There’s no indication that middle-income families feel resentful about the bigger mansions and yachts. But the near-rich, whose social circles intersect those of the rich, are subtly influenced by them.
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Commercial roadways in communities that lack zoning laws, for example, are often an aesthetic nightmare not because of insufficient competition, and not because merchants are stupid or lack taste.
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Once firms had to pay to pollute, they became incredibly inventive at figuring out cheaper ways to eliminate their SO2 emissions.
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Ever since the Great Depression, economists have known that demand shortages tend to persist in the wake of severe financial crises like the ones that happened in 1929 and 2008.
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Prescriptive regulations, such as telling electric utilities what kinds of coal to burn or what kinds of scrubbers to install on their smokestacks, were not only intrusive, they were also grossly inefficient.
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And that’s become dramatically more expensive because of the growth in median house size, which was in turn caused by higher spending at the top.
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Every group spends more when its income grows.
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In almost every instance, air and water quality goals were met more cheaply and quickly when we taxed pollution than when we tried to regulate it directly.
BOB FRANK