John Tamny of RealClearMarkets
Amid the broad decline in economic activity over the past year, there have unsurprisingly been a lot of stories revealing the individual hurt wrought by recession. From shuttered storefronts to foreclosed houses to large-scale bankruptcies of the General Motors variety, many Americans have had to withstand a great deal of economic pain.
While there’s no good or compassionate way to minimize the agony that comes with economic hardship, it should be remembered that economics at its core is all about tradeoffs. We hate seeing people hurt, but the very failure that is so hard to stomach is the tradeoff on assets falling into the hands of those who can either afford them, or who possess a stated objective to use them more wisely. In short, the flipside of failure is opportunity.
