At least two bloggers ( 1 and 2) have cheerfully cited Steve Landsburg’s article in praise of misers. Although it is refreshing anytime someone takes such an unconventional and pro-capitalist position, I’m afraid that I must be a Scrooge with the kudos. Landsburg’s main point—at least, the point to which he devotes the opening of his article, and which the skeptical reader will first see and consider—is that Scrooge is a good guy because he refrains from consuming heating oil, labor power, etc. But by the same token, we should write articles in praise of squirrels, rocks, and limericks. (I.e. these things do not reduce the PPF for “everyone else” either.)
Later in the article Landsburg elaborates and says that, when someone earns a dollar but refrains from spending it, everyone else is a dollar richer. Yes, in a static Kaldor-Hicks framework, I guess this is true—and perhaps worth a Slate article. (I don’t mean this sarcastically; I’m acknowledging that you can’t deal with every possible subtlety in such a piece.) But the division of labor is beneficial even if everybody consumes “what he earns.” For example, if one person alone can catch 10 rabbits per day, while two people together can catch 30 rabbits per day, even if each person consumes 15 rabbits per day, they both benefit from cooperation and the other person’s existence. One couldn’t point to one such man and say, “Because he consumes exactly what he produces—15 rabbits per day—he’s not helping anyone else in society by his actions.”
Finally, I’m also a little uncomfortable with Lansburg classifying saving as a form of philanthropy. For example, if I save up for a decade and then spend my accumulated capital, Landsburg would have to explain this as follows: In the first ten years, I was being generous to the rest of the world. Then in the tenth year, I took back everything (i.e. I was an “Indian giver” to use the non P.C. phrase). Is that really how we should analyze this? Or would it be better to say that I had selfishly spent my earnings on future consumption rather than present consumption, and that philanthropy had nothing to do with it?
