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This morning I got to thinking about what doesn't happen and how difficult that is to deal with sometimes. What spurred it were the recent complaints by airlines about the no fly rules imposed over Europe in the wake of the volcanic ash. According to Lufthansa, the decision was made on the basis of a computer simulation out of London. Billions of dollars have been lost and countless travelers inconvenienced. But--there have also been no major crashes nor loss of life because of the volcanic ash, either. Was it because of the travel ban? Would everything have been okay anyway? Well, we don't exactly know and we'll never know.
Just a week before, however, there was speculation that the pilot of Polish President Kaczynski's plane attempted to land despite being told not to by air traffic controllers.
That's the thing about prevention. Because we prevented what would have happened, we can never be certain that crisis was indeed averted.
It's the same with public policy designed to prevent major catastrophes. Did TARP prevent the second coming of the Great Depression? We forget that when the stock market crashed in 1929, nothing was done to avert the fallout. There was no unemployment insurance, no Medicare, Medicaid, things we now take for granted. I believe if the economy were allowed to go into a 1929 like free fall, we'd have 1930s like conditions. But it wasn't allowed. So we don't know.
The same goes for climate change. Some people refuse to believe the human activity is causing it, but how can it not be? And even if it isn't, isn't it better to be environmentally responsible anyway?
Health insurance reform had to be put into place. Economists such as Uwe Reinhardt predict without reform, health care would be eating up 40% of a middle income family's budget within the next ten years. That is before taxes, food, clothing and shelter. Now that it is in place, this won't happen and some will say: "See, it didn't happen". Uh, yeah.
It's hard not to think of Cassandra, given the gift of prophecy, only to have Apollo curse her by making it so no one would believe her.
Forward thinking policy makers have to be bold. Preventing problems is always cheaper and easier than solving existing ones. But the hammer is that when problems are prevented, we go on our merry way, unconscious of what could have happened.
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