Kinked Constraints

Every microeconomics student learns that sudden changes in opportunities--which are usually represented by kinks in the constraints facing decision makers--generate outcomes that cluster on those kinks.

Examples abound: Workers retire at age 65 (and not at age 64 years and 364 days) because of the substantial change in retirement benefits that kicks precisely when the worker turns 65; employers recall workers from temporary layoffs just before the government-provided unemployment benefits expire; and so on.

Well, here is one particularly pathetic example of the behavioral impact of kinked constraints:

When they came home from Iraq, 2,600 members of the Minnesota National Guard had been deployed longer than any other ground combat unit. The tour lasted 22 months and had been extended as part of President Bush's surge.

1st Lt. Jon Anderson said he never expected to come home to this: A government refusing to pay education benefits he says he should have earned under the GI bill...

Anderson's orders, and the orders of 1,161 other Minnesota guard members, were written for 729 days.

Had they been written for 730 days, just one day more, the soldiers would receive those benefits to pay for school. "Which would be allowing the soldiers an extra $500 to $800 a month," Anderson said.

I no longer believe in coincidences when it comes to stuff like this. Whoever wrote the order for 729 days knew precisely what he or she was doing.

Comments

[calmo]

Excellent post.
Mark Thoma is after those who drafted/directed this policy, but I'm interested in who the major media editors are who will not draw attention to this disgrace.

[Dennis]

There's someone with a serious karmic debt.

How much you want to bet this doesn't become the subject of outrage over at FoxNews.

[Richard A.]

What's needed is a congressional hearing to find out exactly how this happened. We also need an aggressive press -- but we've needed that for years.