What’s the economic impact of lifting $20 from the person next to you on a Manhattan subway, only for you to exit the train at the next stop in order to spend it? Unless you’re Keynesian in orientation, there’s little impact other than perhaps a longer-term incentive to work less. While you’ve increased your “demand” by $20, by definition you’ve shrunken the demand of the individual thieved by $20.
About what was written up above, it’s not unrealistic to imagine that Hoover Institution senior fellow John Cochrane would agree. To disagree would be for Cochrane to imply that thievery has a laudatory economic impact despite it being immoral. Except that Cochrane wouldn’t disagree. One guesses he would bat away the question as a waste of his precious time.
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