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How does Obama spell 'relief'?

Posted by Jon Sanders at 1:28 PM

Well, based on the AP headline "Obama team spells out need for bailout money," I'd guess that if he were honest, he'd spell that "need" for bailout money in two words:

R-E-N-T
S-E-E-K-I-N-G

What, you may ask, is rent-seeking? Here's a good essay on the subject from Mike Munger. The gist:

Robert Tollison, one of America's premier students of public choice and government, defines rent-seeking this way: "Rent seeking is the expenditure of scarce resources to capture an artificially created transfer." Competition for government goodies — rent-seeking — is a wild goose chase, no matter how well-intentioned the goose or the chasers.

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