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When government imposes new taxes, rules, or regulations, it creates outcomes that often differ from the original intent. In some cases, these outcomes are so severe that they render the policy a failure. The law of unintended consequences has taken on an increasing importance during the era of ever-expanding government, and this book explores four important examples: cigarette taxes, alcohol prohibition, the minimum wage, and federal income tax.
Thomas E. Hall examines how the policies came into being, what underlying political considerations influenced the process, the unintended outcomes of the policies, and why many of these policies are still in place. Because many of these unintended consequences are seriously adverse, the author argues that the moral of these four key examples is that whenever a new government policy is being considered, much more detailed review must be given to the range of potential unintended consequences a practice that is rarely or accurately undertaken.

Книгата е дарена от Светла Костадинова.

Government policies created for one set of purposes almost always generate additional results that were not part of the original plan. Very often these unintended consequences are seriously adverse, and in some cases are so severe as to render the policy a failure.
In Aftermath, noted economist Thomas Hall examines four major instances of significant unintended consequences, all of them negative, resulting from major public policies: the federal income tax, cigarette taxes, minimum wage laws, and alcohol prohibition. Each widespread, well known policy was instituted as a positive measure, but almost immediately gave rise to enormously damaging consequences and harmful side effects. What were these terrible consequences? Hall demonstrates how these policies played a significant role in creating America’s vast welfare state, criminal activities, a bloated government hungry for more revenue, smuggling, a scarcity of jobs for teenagers and the working poor, corrupt public officials, overcrowded prisons, and much more. Not exactly what the originators had foreseen. Hall’s exploration of these four iconic policies offers powerful optics for examining current and proposed policies, and he provides an overview of the new and emerging consequences of the Affordable Care Act, the Dodd-Frank Act, and the war on drugs.
With the pace of government policymaking continuing unabated, Hall’s insights on how to examine and minimize the potential outcomes of bureaucratic activity before they can potentially harm the public—in ways not intended or anticipated—are more necessary and vital than ever before.

Thomas E. Hall

Thomas E. Hall is a Professor of Economics at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio where he teaches classes on macroeconomics, business cycles, and the Great Depression. He received his BA from the University of Colorado, and his MA and PhD degrees from the University of California – Santa Barbara. He has written several articles in applied macroeconomics, and authored Business Cycles: The Nature and Causes of Economic Fluctuations; The Great Depression: An International Disaster of Perverse Economic Policies (with J.D. Ferguson); The Rotten Fruits of Economic Controls and the Rise From the Ashes, 1965-1989.