[cdbyr]

I think this misses the point and lets legislators off too easy. Economics tends to be concerned with maximizing the size of the pie, not distribution of benefits. That’s generally seen as government’s domain, with the idea that (with proper distribution) growth can genuinely make everyone better off. As it happens, legislators (and their appointees) seem to be willing to implement the growth-oriented ideas, but not the programs that retrain/etc people who lost out.

Tangentially, there are some nice lists out there of things economists do agree on - here is one of them: http://gregmankiw.blogspot.com/2009/02/news-flash-economists...