Letter Sarah Palin Wrote To Alaska's Congressional Delegation

http://www.gov.state.ak.us/index.html ^ | 1-9-09 | Governor Sarah Palin

[JustaDumbBlonde]

"If you think the porkulus package is going to be defeated then you are living in fantasyland."

Here in fantasyland, where I've listened carefully to what the senators, both republican and democrat, are actually saying, I am seeing substantial resistance building to this pork package. There are fiscally conservative democrats that are not going along.

"The numbers are stacked against the GOP - the best they can do is try to cut some of the pork and add some tax cuts in the Senate version."

This legislation has already been passed out of 2 senate committees and has passed in the House. Unless it is defeated in total, it will pass largely unchanged in the senate. This is not at a stage where the bill is going to be substantially rewritten to get support. Ask Sen. Sessions if you don't believe me. He just said this live on FoxNews.

[LifeComesFirst]

First of all, you’re making straw man arguments. At issue here is the use of tax-payer money for a private enterprise. If that is indeed what Palin is asking for, then she is wrong, as any conservative economist (Sowell, Friedman, Hayek, etc.) could have told you.

If that counts as “maligning Palin,” then so be it. I find it disturbing that any criticism, no matter how slight or how constructive, elicits accusations of being a troll, a Democrat, a Romneyite, etc. I expect that kind of paranoid witch hunt on DU, but I thought Freepers were better than that.

Economic fallacies are common, even among conservatives and Republicans. Before I studied economics, I held to a lot of them myself. One of the most common ones is that “everybody benefits” when the government gives or loans money to a private enterprise, the argument being that it creates jobs, leads to further spending, creates products or services that benefit everybody, etc.

In reality, private enterprises tend to not create much of an external benefit—the only people benefiting are those *paying* for the service. For example, if government money is used to build a port, then everybody who pays taxes pays into the port, but only those who work at the port, build the port, or buy products shipped through the port benefit from it. Those who do not, still pay for it without benefiting, or their benefit may be out of proportion with what they have paid into it in taxes.

Now if the port is paid through private investors, then only those benefiting from the port are paying into it. When you buy a product shipped through that port, a small portion of the cost is from the cost of building, operating, and maintaining that port. The full cost is passed along to those who pay for it because they benefit from it, none of the cost is borne by those who do not benefit from it.

The same goes for sports stadiums, mortgage companies, film studios, restaurants, factories, etc.