Political Economist

Here's an excerpt from one of my finals, which is a nice tying up of
my two years in government school:

"I'm politically and philosophically leery of artificial impositions
on the free market. I respect the choices of individuals and
businesses; after all, capitalism doesn't work without those free
choices. Nevertheless, if the price is wrong in that it leads to too
few positive externalities or too many negative externalities, then
appropriately calculated taxes and subsidies to get the price right
should be considered."

The topic was smart growth, although it could've been anything in
which the government gets involved, which is to say anything, and I
would've said the same thing. So two years after starting on this
thing called government school, I'm now done. I was hoping to see how
an economist's mindset could be applied to political topics, and I got
my wish. And now I start a new job, next week, at a place where I
will get to apply an economist's mindset to political topics. So
while the schooling has come to an end, the learning has just begun.