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… is from page 228 of Dwight Lee’s characteristically insightful paper “Corporate Social Responsibility and Corporate Welfare,” in which he contrasts corporate philanthropy with corporate rent-seeking; Dwight’s paper is chapter 11 in the hot-off-the-press festschrift, The Legacy of Bruce Yandle [2] (2020), edited by Roger Meiners and me:
No one can see how much wealth would not have been destroyed if corporation A had not taken corporate welfare. Similarly, no one can see how much additional wealth is being produced because corporate B did not take corporate welfare.
DBx: Bruce Yandle – the man for whom this festschrift is published – is second-to-none in using economics to help us to see that which would otherwise remain invisible.
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I thank again my Mercatus Center colleague Stefanie Haeffele for her hard and creative work to make both the conference and the book a reality. I thank also Dan Rothschild, Executive Director of the Mercatus Center, for his strong support from the start for this project.
No one can see how much wealth would not have been destroyed if corporation A had not taken corporate welfare. Similarly, no one can see how much additional wealth is being produced because corporate B did not take corporate welfare.