I admit it: I read Bob Higgs. I can come out about it today since Alex likes him too.

There are excellent writers and there are excellent economists and in that intersection there are none better than Bob Higgs:

Until more people come to a more realistic, fact-based understanding of the government and the economy, little hope exists of tearing them away from their quasi-religious attachment to a government they view with misplaced reverence and unrealistic hopes. Lacking a true religious faith yet craving one, many Americans have turned to the state as a substitute god, endowed with the divine omnipotence required to shower the public with something for nothing in every department – free health care, free retirement security, free protection from hazardous consumer products and workplace accidents, free protection from the Islamic maniacs the U.S. government stirs up with its misadventures in the Muslim world, and so forth. If you take the government to be Santa Claus, you naturally want every day to be Christmas; and the bigger the Santa, the bigger his sack of goodies.

I had even started to write a post earlier today about Higgs but didn't finish, thought better of it, and the words didn't flow anyway. It was his writing clarity that would have been my point, something that Alex notes as well. There may be others who are equally astute, but don't write as clearly so the ideas have to crawl out from under the clutter to be seen. Higgs makes it easy.