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No Change in Your Pocket--OR in Washington

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Daily Dose of Reason - Politics & Government
Written by Michael J. Hurd, Ph.D.   
Sunday, 20 July 2008 14:20
Two things they won't tell you about government spending to "stimulate" the economy:

1) It adds no wealth to the economy. When there's real economic growth, wealth is created by business, meaning: by the private sector. The private sector consists of everything from a solo wage-earner or minimum-wage worker to a giant corporation. All of this activity illustrates the creation of wealth. Government creates NO wealth. It simply steals it from one portion of the economy and gives it to another.

2) It's redistribution of wealth. If we're going to have all this government spending, then we ought to call it what it is: taking money from people who produced it and giving it to those who otherwise would not have produced, and could never have produced, it. It's not taking from the rich to give to the poor. While it's true that rich people are having their money taken from them by the government, middle-class people are having it taken too. (I'm middle class, and government takes at least 30 percent of my income from me, for not a lot in return). Also, middle class people and the poor do not have as many choices of jobs or products, and they encounter a generally poorer economy, when some (or ultimately all) of the capital has been removed from capitalism.
Government can add to the poverty, but it cannot create wealth. All government can properly do is protect us from physical aggression, theft and force. For that, we do need government. When government engages in organized and legalized theft of its citizens, it only creates more poverty and stagnation than would otherwise exist.

Massive government spending under Nancy Pelosi and Barack Obama isn't going to be any different, in either its effectiveness or its basic morality, than it was under George W. Bush and the Republican Congress. You're not getting "change" here! The only difference is that the price tag under Pelosi and Obama will be much higher, the damage to the economy even greater, and the downsizing of the military necessitated by this mess will be bigger than ever before.
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