Hey, remember all those shovel-ready jobs that were going to be funded by the stimulus Porkulus
Just one more bit of evidence that the government is far too large. Let's take this piece by piece.
The government spent $775B (almost $900B when you factor in associated pork projects added to buy votes for the Stimulus) on an economic stimulus plan for supposedly "shovel ready" jobs. The stated goal of the stimulus was an emergency infusion of government spending that would stimulate economic growth. So what economic stimulus was provided by the Stimulus Bill? Actually it was negligible. There are a couple of reasons for that.
The government spending $775B for various Stimulus projects COSTS the taxpayers much more. That money didn't just materialize out of thin air......well, actually, some of it did. That money came from three places; taxpayers, creditors and the Federal Reserve's magic money machine.
1) Any money that the government takes from taxpayers reduces capital that might have been used for real production or consumption. And to make matters worse, the government taking X amount of money out of the productive economy doesn't translate into X amount of money put into stimulus. There is a huge pass-through cost associated with the government. The enormous, bloated government machine requires money to operate. So X taken from taxpayers translates to something like X- 20% by the time it goes back to those "shovel ready" jobs.
2) Any money that the government borrows has to be repaid with interest. So when the People's Republic of China buys $200B in US Treasury bonds we will have to repay that with interest. A couple things to remember. The US government borrows 41 cents of every dollar it spends and we now have $16T in national debt. In 2011 alone, the government paid over $454B to service our debt. We are spending as much to pay off our debt as we do to defend our nation, and much of that money goes to potential adversaries.
3) That money we do not borrow or confiscate from the productive segment of our society has been created out of thin air by the Federal Reserve. Through three rounds of quantitative easing and bank bailouts the Fed has dumped hundreds of billions of new dollars into the economy. Now simple economics will tell you that a increasing the money supply in a stagnant or contracting economy is inflationary. Sure, it solves spending problems in the short term, but it also causes inflation. Inflation is a hidden tax on everybody. It robs us of our savings and effectively reduces our pay.
The whole concept of government stimulus spending is financially unsound and has proven time and again to be counterproductive. Even if a dollar taken from the economy equaled a true dollar of stimulus, just what did that dollar of stimulus money buy us? Did we get three quarters of a trillion in shovel-ready jobs? Not really. You see, to be shovel-ready there has to be some sort of advanced planning. If you don't have meticulous plans that money would just be wasted on make-work projects. Of course there were some shovel-ready jobs. Every senator and representative has dozens of personal pork projects sitting around for the time when a little money comes their way. We got plenty of monuments to elected officials to remind voters who to vote for, but just what did we get for the vast majority of that stimulus money? Well, much of it went to the states to pay their employees. The states didn't cut costs the way the private sector has to in a down economy. No, they just went to Uncle Sugar to subsidize their profligate spending. That money was effectively wasted.
So what did we get for close to a trillion in spending? Nothing that stimulated the economy. Last I checked, we aren't much better off than we were in 2009. We got lots of pork projects. We got bailouts for states that were fiscally irresponsible. We got lots more debt. And worst of all, we got a new budget baseline that added three quarters of a trillion in additional spending to the federal budget every year since the stimulus passed. Did we get any sort of coherent program that would actually spend money wisely to benefit the country? Did we get a good return on our investment? Sadly, no.
Our government is now so large that the pissing away of almost a trillion dollars goes practically unnoticed. The government has grown to unprecedented proportions; $4T/yr budget, almost 3 million employees and millions of pages of laws and regulations that rule every aspect of our lives. Our government has grown so wasteful and bloated that something as crazy as spending almost a million dollars to study the practice of genital washing for Africans can not only exist, but go unnoticed for years. How can we have allowed the principles of limited government, enshrined in our constitution, to be so easily ignored?
The government spent $775B (almost $900B when you factor in associated pork projects added to buy votes for the Stimulus) on an economic stimulus plan for supposedly "shovel ready" jobs. The stated goal of the stimulus was an emergency infusion of government spending that would stimulate economic growth. So what economic stimulus was provided by the Stimulus Bill? Actually it was negligible. There are a couple of reasons for that.
The government spending $775B for various Stimulus projects COSTS the taxpayers much more. That money didn't just materialize out of thin air......well, actually, some of it did. That money came from three places; taxpayers, creditors and the Federal Reserve's magic money machine.
1) Any money that the government takes from taxpayers reduces capital that might have been used for real production or consumption. And to make matters worse, the government taking X amount of money out of the productive economy doesn't translate into X amount of money put into stimulus. There is a huge pass-through cost associated with the government. The enormous, bloated government machine requires money to operate. So X taken from taxpayers translates to something like X- 20% by the time it goes back to those "shovel ready" jobs.
2) Any money that the government borrows has to be repaid with interest. So when the People's Republic of China buys $200B in US Treasury bonds we will have to repay that with interest. A couple things to remember. The US government borrows 41 cents of every dollar it spends and we now have $16T in national debt. In 2011 alone, the government paid over $454B to service our debt. We are spending as much to pay off our debt as we do to defend our nation, and much of that money goes to potential adversaries.
3) That money we do not borrow or confiscate from the productive segment of our society has been created out of thin air by the Federal Reserve. Through three rounds of quantitative easing and bank bailouts the Fed has dumped hundreds of billions of new dollars into the economy. Now simple economics will tell you that a increasing the money supply in a stagnant or contracting economy is inflationary. Sure, it solves spending problems in the short term, but it also causes inflation. Inflation is a hidden tax on everybody. It robs us of our savings and effectively reduces our pay.
The whole concept of government stimulus spending is financially unsound and has proven time and again to be counterproductive. Even if a dollar taken from the economy equaled a true dollar of stimulus, just what did that dollar of stimulus money buy us? Did we get three quarters of a trillion in shovel-ready jobs? Not really. You see, to be shovel-ready there has to be some sort of advanced planning. If you don't have meticulous plans that money would just be wasted on make-work projects. Of course there were some shovel-ready jobs. Every senator and representative has dozens of personal pork projects sitting around for the time when a little money comes their way. We got plenty of monuments to elected officials to remind voters who to vote for, but just what did we get for the vast majority of that stimulus money? Well, much of it went to the states to pay their employees. The states didn't cut costs the way the private sector has to in a down economy. No, they just went to Uncle Sugar to subsidize their profligate spending. That money was effectively wasted.
So what did we get for close to a trillion in spending? Nothing that stimulated the economy. Last I checked, we aren't much better off than we were in 2009. We got lots of pork projects. We got bailouts for states that were fiscally irresponsible. We got lots more debt. And worst of all, we got a new budget baseline that added three quarters of a trillion in additional spending to the federal budget every year since the stimulus passed. Did we get any sort of coherent program that would actually spend money wisely to benefit the country? Did we get a good return on our investment? Sadly, no.
Our government is now so large that the pissing away of almost a trillion dollars goes practically unnoticed. The government has grown to unprecedented proportions; $4T/yr budget, almost 3 million employees and millions of pages of laws and regulations that rule every aspect of our lives. Our government has grown so wasteful and bloated that something as crazy as spending almost a million dollars to study the practice of genital washing for Africans can not only exist, but go unnoticed for years. How can we have allowed the principles of limited government, enshrined in our constitution, to be so easily ignored?
BTW: I hope they got 'em clean because we're taking it in the butt on this deal
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