Government "Help"

http://www.solopassion.com/node/7757 ^

[Zanton]

Not once in the history of man has the government ever successfully "stimulated" the economy. Not once has the state ever "rescued" the economy or "made it grow." If the government could genuinely perform such financial magic -- successfully printing money, or conjuring wealth from the clear blue sky, etc. -- wouldn't it do it all of the time, and at a much higher level?

In the history of the world, all that government intervention in production and trade has ever done is make various economic actors -- both labor and management -- behave in ways that they don't want to. All that government does is forcibly alter their economic behaviors so that it hurts their self-interest, personal profit, and entrepreneurial bottom line. Government coercion of various business and financial behaviors makes rational, self-interested employers and employees do what they don't want to, or not do what they do want to.

This violation of reasonable and beneficial human activity -- of various peoples' "selfish" and "greedy" desire to cater to the society and market, and thus make money -- may cause a temporary and illusory economic "expansion," but the eventual and invariable result is the long-term, overall, vast impoverishment of all. This is why all do-gooder, welfare state, government "help" actually hurts.

And it isn't the case that all these do-gooder, welfare state, economic "stimuluses" and "bail-outs" somehow result in massive pain and poverty some of the time, or most of the time, or even 99% of the time. This coercive government "help" hurts and fails always.

[bigbob]

Here’s a surprising article that supports this conclusion:

http://hbswk.hbs.edu/item/6420.html

To their surprise, Harvard researchers found that when government increases spending in an area, private investment in fact goes DOWN. A lot.

Sorta shoots hell out of the porkulus don’t it? Except Porkulus was all about propping up failed state and local programs that were unsustainable to begin with.

[Zanton]

Nice article from the Harvard Business School, Big Bob! The Welfare State is evidently just universally failed and evil. Too bad the Republicans and Democrats can’t figure that out! :-(