Market Correction

4 November 2006

Editor, The Washington Post
1150 15th St., NW
Washington, DC 20071

Dear Editor:

Uwe Reinhardt suggests that, because soldiers in the voluntary military come mostly from working-class backgrounds, wealthier Americans escape the costs of war ("Kerry Trips Over an Economic Truth," November 4). Not so. Soldiers today must be paid market wages for their services. These wages are paid by taxpayers, who are overwhelmingly in middle- and upper-income groups. A taxpayer with no children in the military no more escapes the costs of war than does a taxpayer with no children on the police force escape the costs of local policing.

Now if it's argued that taxpayers don’t feel these costs sufficiently sharply to cause them to question the merits of a war - an argument for which I have much sympathy - then the problem is not the voluntary army. The problem is dangerously dysfunctional government.

Sincerely,
Donald J. Boudreaux
Chairman, Department of Economics
George Mason University