On the Marginal Revolution blog, Alexander Tabarrok quotes Don Boudreaux’s justified ridicule of the federal government’s “paying the City of Los Angeles $30 million to subsidize a ten-year run of Cirque du Soleil.” This deserves scorn and ridicule, yes–but then so does the proposal to have the feds spend $80 billion plus on a “medical innovation prize fund.” Tabarrok inexplicably supports the latter, even though it’s about… 2500 times worse. See Libertarian Favors $80 Billion Annual Tax-Funded “Medical Innovation Prize Fund”; $30 Billion Taxfunded Innovation Contracts: The “Progressive-Libertarian” Solution.
[LRC cross-post]