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… is from David Henderson’s most recent post at EconLog [2] (original emphasis):
The authors don’t do a thorough cost/benefit analysis. They do only a benefit analysis.
Although used as a criticism of a recent Wall Street Journal op-ed on Gerald Ford’s pardon of Richard Nixon, the phenomenon that David describes is quite common across many different issues. And this phenomenon has its own mirror image: the habit of many people to do only a cost analysis – as, for example, when pundits, politicians, professors, or preachers identify and then decry the jobs lost and businesses destroyed or pared down by freer trade.