[QUOTE="mattbbpl"][QUOTE="ZombieKiller7"]
The economy isn't the govt.
The economy is the people (the private sector.)
Govt that tries to "help" usually does the opposite by creating huge agencies that suck down the public coffers and then tax everyone into the poorhouse to pay for it.
Healthy private sector comes from working society (electricity, gas, security, roads, etc) and just leaving it alone to grow and prosper.
ZombieKiller7
Really? Look, if we can't get passed ridiculous notions like "the government doesn't contribute to the economy" (despite it being a major contributor to GDP and a primary tenant of modern economic theory), we will never have a political environment that can actually discuss economics in an academic manner.Also, at least two of your examples of the "private sector/working economy" are paid for through taxes/government expenditures.
Govt can not give anyone anything which it does not first take from others.
It is a useful tool in pooling resources, for example street lights, roads, police, garbage etc.
However govt cannot "improve the economy" or anything of that sort, they first have to TAKE money from someone before they can do something with it, govt does not actually produce anything.
Even when they "fix the roads" they take mony from Peter and give it to Paul who shows up with his work crew to fix the road, and this is fine.
The problem arises when you have 80,000 agencies, mostly unknown by the public, while the govt has to squeeze every last bit out of the private sector just to service the interest on borrowing money to pay for them.
This is complete nonsense, the United States is far from full employment of labour or financial capital and so elevated levels of government spending does not cause crowding out in this situation. Government spending is expansionary (grows the economy) unless you're literally using it to destroy your factors of production. Also, the fact that the public sector needs to have money to make money doesn't mean it's not a producer - unless you're claiming that the private sector doesn't need money to employ and invest, in which case you are an economically illiterate fool and nobody should listen to you.
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