Arnold reminds us of some magnitudes:
My view on the funding of left and right is that if you include government funding, the left enjoys a huge funding advantage. A single government contract for Jonathan Gruber to lend his technocratic hand in government regulation of health insurance or for Mark Zandi to bless the stimulus with precise estimates of multipliers exceeds what one can earn in a lifetime by writing essays on expert failure. Compared with the amount of money that the government spends on statist propaganda and on promoting research that argues for more state power, the funding of conservative think tanks is miniscule.
The issue is similar to campaign finance reform. The typical Congressman or Senator spends more on one earmark than his or her opponent spends on a campaign. Yet what we call “campaign finance reform” is focused on reducing the latter.
