Goverment Self-Interest

Clear eyes on government - Pittsburgh Tribune-Review: "Economists have long assumed that private-sector consumers and producers act chiefly to promote their own self-interests. This assumption is both realistic and the foundation of much of the knowledge that economists since Adam Smith have contributed to public understanding.

But when analyzing the public sector, economists naively assumed voters and government officials are motivated by concern for the general public and not by their own self-interests. That is, the same person who was assumed to act to increase his own well-being as much as possible and to have only limited knowledge about the way the world works when serving as president of, say, General Motors, was assumed to cast aside concern for his own well-being and to become blessed with encyclopedic knowledge and wisdom the moment he takes the oath of office to serve as, say, president of the United States.

One unfortunate consequence of this schizophrenia in economists' analysis was excessive trust in government."