First, We Ignore All The Lawyers

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First, We Ignore All The Lawyers

By Brooks A. Mick, M.D.
May 17, 2006

As much as I and other conservative types like to rant and rail against lawyers, it appears that they don't do as much harm as we thought. When one ranks states as to economic freedom, one finds that those states with more of that inestimable quality have vibrant economies and generally do well as far as state budgets.

Ranking states by tort liabilities doesn't produce an identical pattern, however. Some states with low levels of economic freedom and also high tort liabilities do poorly with regard to state budgets--California, for example--yet other states wtih high tort liabilities do well with their state budget. One does note that those states, such as Florida, are ranked fairly high in economic freedom.

Some states with low tort liabilities, such as Ohio, nonetheless have poor economies and state budget problems. This correlates with low levels of economic freedom.

Thus it would appear that Shakespeare's idea, "First we kill all the lawyers," was a mistaken priority. First, we should work toward economic freedom and low tax liabilities if we wish to have a vibrant state economy and a balanced state budget.

Some states such as Virginia have both high ranking in economic freedom and low tort liability. This is certainly good, and the state's economy has done well and tax revenues have been high even before the past governor, Warner, claimed impending budgetary doom and got the Republican legislature to raise taxes. As some of us predicted, the government immediately found ways to spend all the extra money and are again crying about the need for tax increases. Given the examples above, I suppose we could run an experimentin Virgiia and see if a citizenry could be taxed into prosperity. But looking at the examples in other states, it doesn't work. Maybe we in Virginia should pay attention to prior examples.

"Experience is a fine teacher--and a fool will have no other."

Learning from the experience of others, if we want a vibrant ecoomy and a balanced budget, we need to keep taxes low and maximize economic freedom. Getting rid of the lawyers is of a much lower priority.

http://www.pacificresearch.org/pub/sab/entrep/2004/econ_freedom/states/main.html

http://www.pacificresearch.org/pub/sab/entrep/2006/tort_reform/index.html

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About the author Brooks A. Mick: Physician, still practicing medicine but retired from the US Army. Write just for the fun of it, but working on novel in the vein of Tom Clancy's politico-military genre.

Email: brooks15@cox.net

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