Tuesday, August 28, 2007

The Economics of Envy?

Leave it to the NYTimes to take a fairly simple and common sense economic decision and inject a healthy dose of class consciousness into it.

Now, as far as I can tell, the reason for insurance is to pool resources and mitigate against losses. An insurance company’s liabilities become the liabilities of all its policy holders, to the extent that if the insurance company ever becomes insolvent every other policy holder is going to pay a steep price. So, protecting its most valuable policies (i.e. its biggest potential liabilities) would seem to benefit all policyholders. But, hey, I guess I am just blessed with an overabundance of rationale and common economic sense. If you take it the way the Times is giving it, it's just one more example of the "little guy" losing out while the rich get extra protection.