The Broken Window Fallacy

     It was a quiet and unrequited day in rural England, the adults were off to work the birds were chirping and, the kids were out in the streets playing games. There was one game in particular that was garnering loads of interest between the town. A game of cricket between two twins, Ronnie and Donnie. Ronnie is up to bat against his brother and with all hope put on him he swings the bat so hard it almost leaps out if his hands. The ball sores over field and strikes through the window of a tailor's shop cementing a solid hole in the wall. The tailor was obviously extremely upset and a crowd gathers around the shattered glass, further lamenting his already dire problem.
     Ronnie, quick on his feet, defended himself saying,"This doesn't have to be bad! Because the window is broken, the tailor will have to buy a new one, which will give work to a glazier. Then they will have more money to spend elsewhere and as a product our economy will be able to be stimulated resulting to a good fortune for everyone in this town." And in time the crowd quickly agreed to this assertion and went own with their day happy to know that there economy would grow as a result of this incident which at first glance seemed to terrible to be reconciled with.
     But sadly the crowd wasn't aware of the whole truth. The tailor was saving up his money to dine in a fine restaurant with his wife on their anniversary, but now he would have to invest it into replacing the window. The economy was not one window worth's richer, but one dinner poorer. Because the window was broken, the economic activity that occurs is less effective at satisfying the wants of the people than it would have been had that not had happened.
How Disasters Help, Hurricane Sandy Helps the Economy, Reckonings: After the Horror.
     According the the articles above, the best way to aid our economies would be to blow up all our cities to ashes and leave the pick up to the government. Going back to the window metaphor, the kid has reduced the bakers disposable income meaning he can't invest in some other luxury. So maybe the broken window does turn out to help the glazier, but at the same time it robs certain industries, and reduce the amount spent on certain goods. Furthermore to debunk this myth the payment in this sort is for maintenance, which just give route to a lack of truly new goods which do induct production and in sort the economy instead of simply a service cost. All this simply goes to point out that destruction- as well as its costs- don't pay in such an economic sense.