A Champion of Liberty – Did the destruction of the Twin Towers create prosperity?
“War! What is it good for?” This was the question that Bill Kauffman asked the audience at the Campaign for Liberty’s ‘Rally for the Republic.’ The audience shouted back, “absolutely nothing!” Kauffman conceded, “To be fair, it is good for the prosthetic limb industry, the moving van industry, funeral parlors located near military bases.” It’s also good for the people who manufacture instruments of destruction: bombs, tanks, planes, and so on. These few, private gains come at a terrible cost to the rest of society which must pay for the destruction. Three days after September 11 occurred, Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman wrote in the New York Times that “there will, potentially, be two favorable effects” of the destruction of the Twin Towers, setting aside the loss of life. “Now, all of a sudden, we need some new office buildings” and “rebuilding will generate at least some increase in business spending,” Krugman wrote. Secondly, the attacks allow the government to spend more
