Economists will give elevator dissertations on the power of incentives, and the classic book Freakonomics (and its excellent podcast) often go into following the incentive trail to understand a certain behavior/non-behavior. In a recent interview, Warren Buffett gave his his own take on the power of incentives, offering forth this example to emphasize his point:
“I could end the deficit in 5 minutes. You just pass a law that says that anytime there is a deficit of more than 3% of GDP all sitting members of congress are ineligible for reelection.”
Boom. Incentive.
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