Posted on 03/04/2009 11:09:21 AM PST by ElkGroveDan
Washington's response to the current recession illustrates one of the fundamental laws of political physics: the more that we spend on our mistakes, the less willing we are to admit them.
The conventional wisdom is that if government can "inject" enough money into the economy, it can reverse the recession. Unfortunately, the hard and bitter truth is that government cannot inject a single dollar into the economy that it has not first taken out of that economy. ....
True, government takes a dollar from Peter and gives it to Paul, Paul has one dollar more to spend and that dollar will ripple through the economy. The problem is that Peter now has one less dollar to spend. On paper it nets to zero.
In practice, it nets to much less than zero, because government is shifting massive amounts of capital away from investments that would have been based on economic calculations and toward investments based on political ones.
How else do you explain the $800 billion spending bill that the president boasts will "save or create" up to 4 million new jobs? Put a pocket calculator to work on the president's own numbers and you will discover it works out to a cost of $200,000 for every job he promises. Sending a $100,000 check to every one of those four million families would save $400 billion.
Of course, the government doesn't have that money. Between our current deficit of $1.2 trillion and the $800 billion more about to be added, our national treasury will spend $2 trillion more than it receives as revenue.
So the government must borrow that $2 trillion or about $6,500 for every man, woman and child in the nation. ...
(Excerpt) Read more at mercurynews.com ...
Tom McClintock ping!
PING!
McClintock Ping List.
Please freepmail me if you want on or off this list
Oh, that Tom.
He’s so unObama.
I hope he wears a couple mics out giving floor speeches this session.
BTTT
Michael Steele willing be calling Tom McClintock ugly and divisive soon.
Tom McClintock BUMP!
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