Scenes from a summer
“We had reversed the recession, avoided a depression, gotten the economy moving again…But over the last six months we’ve had a run of bad luck” — the Arab Spring uprisings, the tsunami in Japan, and the European debt crises — which set the economy back…he spent Tuesday here in Peosta squirreled away in rural economic forums; he said afterward that they talked about such things as cows grazing next to solar panels and “helping farms manage manure in creative ways”…”when you talk about the SNAP program or the foot stamp program, you have to recognize that it’s also an economic stimulus. Every dollar of SNAP benefits generates $1.84 in the economy in terms of economic activity”…In 2010 “Seattle…won a coveted $20 million federal grant to invest in weatherization…It had heady goals: creating 2,000 living-wage jobs…As of last week, only three homes had been retrofitted and just 14 new jobs have emerged from the program.”
August 18th, 2011 at 6:18 am
“Every dollar of SNAP benefits generates $1.84 in the economy in terms of economic activity”
Even if that is right … what kind of activity? Government should build a road that will promote efficient commerce, inspiring private enterprise to efficiently fill market demand, providing self replicating economic activity. (and not require that road cost double the real market price, as a handout to the union bosses)
But “Green jobs” inefficiently doles out political favor money that is wasted or builds something like shiny Amtrak trains, that require continuous subsidy.
So the dollar spent by government is taken from private enterprise, and often used to compete against it. That dollar MIGHT generate $1.84 once, but might suppress also, the generation of $3.84 continuously, from activity if the taxpayer was allowed to spend his own dollar. And that activity could happen without a 20% “friends of big government surcharge”.
Anyway … that’s my rough understanding of the “dollar spent is a $1.84 earned” myth. Government redistribution is more about legalized plunder than free trade stimulation.
August 18th, 2011 at 6:45 am
… oh, and that theoretical $1.84 of “economic activity”, only generates a theoretical $0.65 in tax revenue. So this socialist tapeworm dollar requires a living capitalist host cow from which to continuously suck the other 35 cents.
August 18th, 2011 at 6:56 am
Yes, bad luck!
Throughout history, poverty is the normal condition of man. Advances which permit this norm to be exceeded — here and there, now and then — are the work of an extremely small minority, frequently despised, often condemned, and almost always opposed by all right-thinking people. Whenever this tiny minority is kept from creating, or (as sometimes happens) is driven out of a society, the people then slip back into abject poverty.
This is known as “bad luck.”
Robert Heinlein (Hat Tip: Instapundit)
August 19th, 2011 at 1:39 am
We need a president with better luck.