Aftermath: The Unintended Consequences of Public Policies

Government policies created for one set of purposes almost always generate additional results that were not part of the original plan. Very often these unintended consequences are seriously adverse, and in some cases are so severe as to render the policy a failure.

In Aftermath, noted economist Thomas Hall examines four major instances of significant unintended consequences, all of them negative, resulting from major public policies: the federal income tax, cigarette taxes, minimum wage laws...