Guest Post by Gabriel Rossman-- Professor Rossman is a sociologist at UCLA. His work applies economic sociology to media industries. He blogs at Code and Culture and is the author of Climbing the Charts

In the course of a discussion about Mormons, a friend pointed me to a religious testimony offered by Clayton Christensen (who is best known for his work on disruptive innovation). In his testimony, Christensen describes his belief in the Book of Mormon through a religious epiphany reminiscent of St. Augustine's "tolle lege" experience. However this is in the second half of the essay, the first half being devoted to a description of the strength of the LDS community and an argument that this social capital is directly related to the lay priesthood ecclesiastical structure of LDS. One story from this part of the testimonial struck me in particular:

[O]ur family had out-grown our small home, so we found a larger one and put the word out that we would appreciate any help in loading and unloading our rented moving truck. Among those who showed up that morning was Mitt Romney, now the governor of Massachusetts, who had just completed his unsuccessful campaign for the U.S. Senate in Massachusetts. Mitt had a broken collarbone, but for two hours traipsed between our home and the truck, carrying out whatever he could manage with his one good arm.

From a purely utilitarian perspective this is ridiculous. You have a man with a vast fortune and a (temporary) physical impairment. It would be an obvious gain from trade if rather than providing his hobbled physical labor, Romney were instead to give Christensen $100 and tell him to hire a day laborer. Of course if it happened like that the story would be the plot to an episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm with the upshot that Larry David is an obtuse misanthrope, not a religious testimonial with the upshot that Mormons have a strong community. Indeed this story is in the middle of a paragraph which begins and ends by talking about how as a general matter Mormons are eager to help one another and is part of a broader argument about how Mormons provide both mundane and ecclesiastical services to one another directly rather than through professionals. In the context of the essay, the practical value of the impaired labor that Romney provided is clearly secondary to the affirmation of moral community implied by his willingness to provide it. In this sense, that Romney was injured makes his contribution more significant, not less, which is why Christensen chose to draw attention to it.

Similarly, consider Joel Waldfogel's AER article "The Deadweight Loss of Christmas" (which he later adapted into Scroogenomics). The article basically demonstrates that people don't especially like the gifts grandma gives them for Christmas. I like Waldfogel a lot* and think this article makes a real contribution in showing how gifts are a deadweight loss when viewed from the perspective of market pricing. However treating this as a problem and normatively asserting that people are irrational to give gifts is like an astronomer chastising a comet for not having the right orbit. (This is not an uncommon issue with economists). The conclusion suggests the policy proposal that replacing in-kind welfare benefits with cash transfers would increase the poor's utility. (Again, not unheard of). In related news, if my grandmother had balls she'd be my grandfather. There is a certain logic to replacing in-kind programs with cash transfers that is very compelling on its own terms, but in practice few people would agree to it. One of our biggest transfer programs is Medicaid, and converting it to a cash transfer would mean that especially sick poor people would go without heath care, something the left would find unacceptable. (You can see this understanding implicit in the individual mandate, which not only serves the wonkish goals of avoiding the death spiral and cross-subsidizing the sick, but perhaps more importantly the political goal of including in universal coverage those people who would rather spend their money on something other than insurance premiums). Likewise, the right has a habit of objecting when welfare recipients spend transfers frivolously on either an isolated or widespread basis. In the 1990s it was a common trope to complain about welfare recipients who had cable television. More recently we've seen complaints about (and restrictions against) people drawing transfer payments from ATMs at casinos and strip clubs or using food stamps to buy junk food. That is to say, there is an implicit, pan-ideological consensus that transfers are about society providing the poor with that which we deem it appropriate for them to have and not that which they would purchase themselves if they had the money. A cash transfer welfare state would be politically untenable even though it is probably true that cash would be more efficient (as assessed by the utilitarian logic of market pricing).