But Mankiw wants utilitarianism to appear silly, since he sees it as underpinning policies such as Obamacare and a higher minimum wage. But like many critiques of utilitarianism, this one starts to seem...oddly utilitarian.

Another problem with the utilitarian approach is that there is no objective way to compare one person’s happiness with another’s, especially when people have different preferences. Peter may work long hours at a dreary job to earn a high income because he gets a lot of utility from money. Paul may be forgoing a higher income for a job that requires fewer hours or offers more personal satisfaction because he doesn’t care as much about money. In this case, equalizing incomes by moving a dollar from Peter to Paul could reduce total utility.

Notice that Mankiw first claims there is no way to compare people's happiness, and then he goes ahead and...makes a comparison, just in the opposite direction. If Mankiw is able to do this in a tossed off column, is it really surprising to think that healthcare policymakers could also do it? Government makes regulations all the time that weigh different costs and benefits, which of course boil down to some version of "happiness."

But the bigger flaw with Mankiw's argument concerns Obamacare directly:

If you were ill at the beginning of the 19th century, a physician was your best bet, but his knowledge was so rudimentary that his remedies could easily make things worse rather than better. And so it is with economics today. That is why we economists should be sure to apply the principle "first, do no harm." This principle suggests that when people have voluntarily agreed upon an economic arrangement to their mutual benefit, that arrangement should be respected. (The main exception is when there are adverse effects on third parties — what economists call “negative externalities.”) As a result, when a policy is complex, hard to evaluate and disruptive of private transactions, there is good reason to be skeptical of it.

What's so interesting about this excerpt is the way that it views the pre-Obamacare status quo. Ask yourself this: would someone who didn't have health insurance ever describe the pre-Obamacare system in these terms? We already had a healthcare system that made all kinds of trade-offs. And many people, of course, never really "voluntarily agreed" to the system, even if they were lucky enough to have had insurance. Was paying high premiums because of pre-existing conditions a choice? Was taking the plan from your employer a choice? In Mankiw's world, however, things only became disruptive after Obamacare.

The status quo, whether in terms of the minimum wage or healthcare, was not just some completely fair system that is now being messed with by statist liberals. Our system of government and economy have been "disruptive" for a very long time.