West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin did his party a favor by rejecting the Build Back Better wish list reminiscent of LBJ's Great Society because the government has no idea how to deliver satisfying promise keeping results. Yet Democrats still think they can make good enough approximations of unknowable health, education and welfare benefits that an individual considers. They can't accept that Washington’s programs gone wrong still reverberates within the American psyche, best expressed by Ronald Reagan’s quip about the seven scariest words; “I’m from the government. I’m here to help.” However, the $300 a month check for Child Care Support issued to parents in Build Back is one provision this Libertarian free market follower of Milton Friedman economics could support because it fits in the most efficient cell of his spending quadrant. It's the cell where spending does the most good at the least cost without the resentment caused by pointy headed experts from Washington telling people what's good for them.
Friedman's quadrant has two rows of two cells. The top row are purchases by one using their own money and the bottom row are purchases by one using other people's money. So the upper left cell is a consumer buying a product for themself with their own money. It’s the optimal cell because the buyer has perfect knowledge to make the best decision of benefit over cost. The right cell is less optimal because the buyer of a gift for example can not completely know the benefit to the person they are buying it for. The second row is where it can get grossly inefficient. The left cell can have a buyer selecting a Rolls Royce over a Chevrolet to maximize his benefit without regard for cost. It's suboptimal but at least the buyer is happy. The right cell is the purchaser buying for another using other people's money. Unfortunately for the central government favoring Democrats this cell satisfies neither the buyer nor regard for cost. It's the least efficient because at a granular both benefits and costs are unknowable. This four cell spending quadrant is the genesis of Milton Friedman's national income scheme proposed fifty years ago and which Andrew Yang made popular during his 2020 primary run for the Democrat ticket. But the original proposal required replacing FDR's social safety net with a national income to push purchases of health education and welfare to the efficient cell and avoid the waste, misallocation of resources and the tyranny of experts coming from Washington bureaucracies.
