"Tax and tax, spend and spend, elect and elect!"
If We Only Spent All the Money, Then Everyone Would Be Prosperous!
On the front of today's New York Times business section is a remarkable—or should I say remarkably unremarkable—news article whose entire premise, unchallenged in the course of 1,341 words and input from 10 sources, is that more government spending is a very good thing because it leads to more government jobs and therefore helps the economy. Hooray! (...)
Credit where it's due: As government-spending euphemisms go, "preserving the wow factor" is surely in the Top 20...
I have only four questions for the NYT and those who agree with its premise that the more government spends, the more prosperous we are:
1) Why were states not measurably more prosperous after increasing government spending by more than 80 percent in real terms between 2003 and 2007?
2) Between the time of Bill Clinton's last submitted budget of $1.8 trillion, and Barack Obama's first submitted budget of $3.6 trillion, did the average American become more or less prosperous?
3) The United States after World War II, Canada in the 1990s, and Australia in the 1980s all became significantly more prosperous—despite ample warnings to the contrary—after cutting, not increasing, government spending. Wha' happen?
4) Is there a ceiling on what percentage of GDP the government should account for, and if so why should there be one, and where should it be?
Biting the hand that feeds IT
