The Loss Of Government Jobs Is Holding Back The Economy

[Londoner]

Screw Eisenhower....What worked when he had total control of the military situation isn't practical or practicable in a free economy.

The USSR was tried, operating on that very philosophy....How'd that shake out?

The Hoover Dam made it more possible for us to settle and modernize the Southwest. It allowed us to bring water and energy and irrigation to a massive part of the country. And there was no single business that had either the money or the incentive to build it. More to the point: the allocation of tax dollars to big infrastructure projects proved compatible with free markets and the billions of dollars that people like Steve Jobs and Bill Gates were able to accumulate. There's a middle ground between seizing the modes of production and allocating tax dollars to infrastructure & defense which your well meaning rage does not seem to capture.

Look at the Cold War budgets for the Pentagon and NASA. Government and business partnered very effectively in the sectors of commercial aviation and consumer electronics. I'm sure you can imagine the technology required to project American power around the globe or put a man on the moon. Indeed, a lot of the technology that fueled the 1980s consumer electronics boom came out of the state sector. Even small things like containerization (which greatly improved the efficiency of shipping) was developed
by the state sector.

Or look at the massive government led industrial build up for WWII. Specifically, look at how war manufacturing plants were converted into private sector industries for consumables - and the role these industries played in establishing America's postwar manufacturing dominance.

Again, I'm suggesting that you might want to separate this kind of spending from welfare spending.

Tragically, your information systems have left you with oversimplified clichés about "evil government", when they should've helped you see the complicated but effective partnership between government and the private sector. Halliburton, Lockheed Martin, Eli Lilly and Boeing all have deep and very effective partnerships with the American government. Those partnerships, subsidized heavily by the taxpayer, have resulted in trillions of dollars in profits for private investors. Your tired talk about Socialism doesn't account for this, but you keep repeating it because it's all you have.

Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Ann Coulter, CNBC, Bill O'Reilly, Mark Levine, Michael Savage, MSNBC, Keith Olbermann, Lawrence O'Donnell, Chris Matthews, Rachel Maddow, and FOX News do a great job fueling the rage of stupid people, but they fail to educate.

Turn the shit off and take your brain back.

 

[Oddball]

The money was moved there from somewhere else.

Economic central planner socialists like visible beneficiaries and invisible casualties.

There's no free lunch, dude.

 

[Londoner]

There's no free lunch, dude.

There is a free lunch if you are a large corporation and you invest in the right politicians, but, regrettably, I don't think this will change in my lifetime.

 

[Oddball]

Nope....Not even then, comrade.

 

[Toddsterpatriot]

Gubmint has no money of its own

Obviously. Thanks for the talk radio bumper sticker.

I'll ask again: do you think there is a difference between government spending on the legal infrastructure associated with say the patent system (which corporations want) and government spending on welfare for the poor? Or... what about the legal system as whole, which enforces contracts and protects private property and supplies the needed predictability to market transactions? Rather than spewing tired anti-government rhetoric which we've all heard before, have you ever attempted to draw distinctions between different forms of government behavior? For instance, do you think government subsidies to Boeing and commercial aviation were better spent than spending on poverty programs?

Talk Radio Republican versus Eisenhower - A one act play

Eisenhower (father of Interstate): "Sound transportation investments lowers the costs of moving people and goods. This increases economic productivity."

TRR: "Fucking Gubmint."

Eisenhower: "When money is spent on any public works project, the people who are paid to construct that project use the money they receive to buy services and goods from others. The money spent in any jurisdiction thus recirculates there and elsewhere, with the initial expenditure priming the pump of economic activity. Construction workers spend their income to buy hamburgers, television sets, and automobile insurance, so a given dollar of construction expenditure ends up having more than a dollar's worth of impact, thus "multiplying" the effect of the expenditure. This multiplier also shows up in the balance sheet of corporations, who can now ship their goods much cheaper. This is why Republicans have traditionally been in favor of infrastructure spending over welfare spending - because they see a more obvious benefit. The spending on the Hoover Dam, national Interstate and Brooklyn Bridge will have a positive commercial effect for untold decades, whereas when government spends your money protecting the dung beetle...."

TRR: "Fucking Gubmint."

"Sound transportation investments lowers the costs of moving people and goods. This increases economic productivity."

How much of any Obama budget was used for something useful that "... lowers the costs of moving people and goods....(or) increases economic productivity."?

And how much was payoffs to crony supporters, like Solyndra?

 

[barry1960]

So we take taxpayer dollars to create public sector jobs that don't produce anything so people that produce have less money to spend.And this is a good thing?

Public sector workers provide services such as teaching our children, protecting our citizens, maintaining our roads, and fighting fires. They pay taxes. With their paychecks they buy goods and services which fuel our economy.

Sure, not everyone can work for the government. We need a private sector. However i grow tired of the mantra that government workers produce nothing.

Nonsense.
First, DO NOT include public safety workers. Public safety is an essential function of government.
Second. Most of the taxes these people pay go right back into their pockets. Essentially, they pay themselves. That is why the system is self serving.
For example. When then NJ Gov Corzine was forced to sign a annual tax levy cap bill into law, the first people to complain and the loudest complainers were the unions representing public workers and the rank and file.
Imagine that.
Increasing the size of government accomplishes two things..
1. it increases the size of government.
2 removes money from the economy.

I wonder if a government worker would see the taxes they pay as going right back into their pockets. They would say they receive money to perform a service and pay taxes just like you. When a government worker spends money at a place of business, it helps the business just like your money does.

 

[barry1960]

Growth in the public sector is a drag on the economy. Increased government spending removes cash from the producers in the private sector.

You might separate spending on things like industrial infrastructure from, say, welfare. Do you know how much money we spend on the patent system or protecting the overseas supply chains of corporations? Things like the Hoover Dam and the Interstate and energy grids and government investment in the internet and commercial aviation had a huge multiplier effect. This is why corporations create such massive lobbying system. John Galt spends a lot of time in Washington begging for subsidies. Government spending is not frowned on by business - it is craved.

http://deanbaker.net/images/stories/documents/cnswebbook.pdf

Also. Look at what happened to the Bush Tax Cuts. They went overwhelmingly into the Wall Street Casino, which has grown overly speculative, and based increasingly on asset bubbles. Money poured into housing securities and derivatives as opposed to the real economy. The reason they didn't go into the real economy is because consumer demand has grown increasingly weak since we started shipping jobs to cheaper labor markets in freedom-hating nations. We tried to replace lost jobs/wages with credit cards. A.K.A morning in America brought to you by Visa, American Express and Master Card. And when ran out of plastic credit, we turned to the last thing left that had any value - our homes.

You might want to take your socialist central planning views and post to someone else.

Conservative mantra does best painting strawmen with a broad brush. How on earth did you get socialist central planning from that post?

 

[Steelplate]

Gubmint has no money of its own

Obviously. Thanks for the talk radio bumper sticker.

I'll ask again: do you think there is a difference between government spending on the legal infrastructure associated with say the patent system (which corporations want) and government spending on welfare for the poor? Or... what about the legal system as whole, which enforces contracts and protects private property and supplies the needed predictability to market transactions? Rather than spewing tired anti-government rhetoric which we've all heard before, have you ever attempted to draw distinctions between different forms of government behavior? For instance, do you think government subsidies to Boeing and commercial aviation were better spent than spending on poverty programs?

Talk Radio Republican versus Eisenhower - A one act play

Eisenhower (father of Interstate): "Sound transportation investments lowers the costs of moving people and goods. This increases economic productivity."

TRR: "Fucking Gubmint."

Eisenhower: "When money is spent on any public works project, the people who are paid to construct that project use the money they receive to buy services and goods from others. The money spent in any jurisdiction thus recirculates there and elsewhere, with the initial expenditure priming the pump of economic activity. Construction workers spend their income to buy hamburgers, television sets, and automobile insurance, so a given dollar of construction expenditure ends up having more than a dollar's worth of impact, thus "multiplying" the effect of the expenditure. This multiplier also shows up in the balance sheet of corporations, who can now ship their goods much cheaper. This is why Republicans have traditionally been in favor of infrastructure spending over welfare spending - because they see a more obvious benefit. The spending on the Hoover Dam, national Interstate and Brooklyn Bridge will have a positive commercial effect for untold decades, whereas when government spends your money protecting the dung beetle...."

TRR: "Fucking Gubmint."

"Sound transportation investments lowers the costs of moving people and goods. This increases economic productivity."

How much of any Obama budget was used for something useful that "... lowers the costs of moving people and goods....(or) increases economic productivity."?

And how much was payoffs to crony supporters, like Solyndra?

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikiped...vestmentbubble.jpg/400px-Investmentbubble.jpg

Here's the breakdown of the 2009 American Recovery and Reinvestment Act....note the largest bubble....that fucking Marxist bastard.

 

[Londoner]

How much of any Obama budget was used for something useful that "... lowers the costs of moving people and goods....(or) increases economic productivity."?

And how much was payoffs to crony supporters, like Solyndra?

Now we're talking. This is a fair point.

I think there is a high incidence of corruption, but I'm not convinced the answer is to completely reject the allocation of tax dollars to infrastructure.

Big Business, through election funding and lobbying, has created a culture of corrupt no-bid contracts. Halliburton staffs the Vice Presidency, Goldman Sachs staffs the fed, and Elli Lilly owned the 2003 Republican Congress which passed Bush's Medicare Part D - which awarded Ely Lilly a no-bid contract to charge the government above market drug costs.

 

[Steelplate]

How much of any Obama budget was used for something useful that "... lowers the costs of moving people and goods....(or) increases economic productivity."?

And how much was payoffs to crony supporters, like Solyndra?

Now we're talking. This is a fair point.

I think there is a high incidence of corruption, but I'm not convinced the answer is to completely reject the allocation of tax dollars to infrastructure.

Big Business, through election funding and lobbying, has created a culture of corrupt no-bid contracts. Halliburton staffs the Vice Presidency, Goldman Sachs staffs the fed, and Elli Lilly owned the 2003 Republican Congress which passed Bush's Medicare Part D - which awarded Ely Lilly a no-bid contract to charge the government above market drug costs.

Now now now....we can't blame business for anything. It's not their fault....it's never their fault....

 

[Londoner]

Conservative mantra does best painting strawmen with a broad brush. How on earth did you get socialist central planning from that post?

Exactly. I was making a reference to how expensive both the Patent system is along with the larger legal infrastructure needed to enforce contracts and protect private property. And then there's the defense expenditure required to stabilize the global market system so capital and goods can flow efficiently from unstable parts of the world. All these things are hugely expensive and they benefit the private sector immensely. Capital depends on a dynamic state sector to protect its interests. A massive infrastructure is required to have even a basic exchange system in the first place. Do people know the basic legal and regulatory costs of maintaining just one futures market? Oddball says "the money comes from somewhere", so I'm trying to explain that many of the structures that enable the circulation of money and the accumulation of profit come from government activity (which is why we see so much lobbying). Unfortunately, many people here are getting their information from pundits and websites that explain none of this. The only response they have is to call everything socialism, but advanced industrial capitalism has always had varying levels of support and intervention from the state. I'm just trying to draw some distinctions between the various levels of state intervention and spending, but I keep getting canned responses.

 

[The Rabbi]

Gubmint has no money of its own

Obviously. Thanks for the talk radio bumper sticker.

I'll ask again: do you think there is a difference between government spending on the legal infrastructure associated with say the patent system (which corporations want) and government spending on welfare for the poor? Or... what about the legal system as whole, which enforces contracts and protects private property and supplies the needed predictability to market transactions? Rather than spewing tired anti-government rhetoric which we've all heard before, have you ever attempted to draw distinctions between different forms of government behavior? For instance, do you think government subsidies to Boeing and commercial aviation were better spent than spending on poverty programs?

Talk Radio Republican versus Eisenhower - A one act play

Eisenhower (father of Interstate): "Sound transportation investments lowers the costs of moving people and goods. This increases economic productivity."

TRR: "Fucking Gubmint."

Eisenhower: "When money is spent on any public works project, the people who are paid to construct that project use the money they receive to buy services and goods from others. The money spent in any jurisdiction thus recirculates there and elsewhere, with the initial expenditure priming the pump of economic activity. Construction workers spend their income to buy hamburgers, television sets, and automobile insurance, so a given dollar of construction expenditure ends up having more than a dollar's worth of impact, thus "multiplying" the effect of the expenditure. This multiplier also shows up in the balance sheet of corporations, who can now ship their goods much cheaper. This is why Republicans have traditionally been in favor of infrastructure spending over welfare spending - because they see a more obvious benefit. The spending on the Hoover Dam, national Interstate and Brooklyn Bridge will have a positive commercial effect for untold decades, whereas when government spends your money protecting the dung beetle...."

TRR: "Fucking Gubmint."

"Sound transportation investments lowers the costs of moving people and goods. This increases economic productivity."

How much of any Obama budget was used for something useful that "... lowers the costs of moving people and goods....(or) increases economic productivity."?

And how much was payoffs to crony supporters, like Solyndra?

Exactly. Obama pushed "infrastructure spending" with "shovel ready jobs." It was a joke. We got footpaths for frogs in Florida and renovations of abandoned train stations.
There is no economic benefit in any of that.
The stimulus money was wasted. It was taken from productive people and given to non productive people under the discredited theory that consumer spending increases wealth. It doesnt. It was pushed under the discredited theory that there is a multiplier effect of gov't spending. There isn't. So no wonder the stimulus was the biggest failure of economic policy since WIN buttons.

 

[The Rabbi]

Obviously. Thanks for the talk radio bumper sticker.

I'll ask again: do you think there is a difference between government spending on the legal infrastructure associated with say the patent system (which corporations want) and government spending on welfare for the poor? Or... what about the legal system as whole, which enforces contracts and protects private property and supplies the needed predictability to market transactions? Rather than spewing tired anti-government rhetoric which we've all heard before, have you ever attempted to draw distinctions between different forms of government behavior? For instance, do you think government subsidies to Boeing and commercial aviation were better spent than spending on poverty programs?

Talk Radio Republican versus Eisenhower - A one act play

Eisenhower (father of Interstate): "Sound transportation investments lowers the costs of moving people and goods. This increases economic productivity."

TRR: "Fucking Gubmint."

Eisenhower: "When money is spent on any public works project, the people who are paid to construct that project use the money they receive to buy services and goods from others. The money spent in any jurisdiction thus recirculates there and elsewhere, with the initial expenditure priming the pump of economic activity. Construction workers spend their income to buy hamburgers, television sets, and automobile insurance, so a given dollar of construction expenditure ends up having more than a dollar's worth of impact, thus "multiplying" the effect of the expenditure. This multiplier also shows up in the balance sheet of corporations, who can now ship their goods much cheaper. This is why Republicans have traditionally been in favor of infrastructure spending over welfare spending - because they see a more obvious benefit. The spending on the Hoover Dam, national Interstate and Brooklyn Bridge will have a positive commercial effect for untold decades, whereas when government spends your money protecting the dung beetle...."

TRR: "Fucking Gubmint."

"Sound transportation investments lowers the costs of moving people and goods. This increases economic productivity."

How much of any Obama budget was used for something useful that "... lowers the costs of moving people and goods....(or) increases economic productivity."?

And how much was payoffs to crony supporters, like Solyndra?

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikiped...vestmentbubble.jpg/400px-Investmentbubble.jpg

Here's the breakdown of the 2009 American Recovery and Reinvestment Act....note the largest bubble....that fucking Marxist bastard.

Which bubble did teaching Chinese prostitutes to drink responsibly fit in?

 

[Steelplate]

"Sound transportation investments lowers the costs of moving people and goods. This increases economic productivity."

How much of any Obama budget was used for something useful that "... lowers the costs of moving people and goods....(or) increases economic productivity."?

And how much was payoffs to crony supporters, like Solyndra?

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikiped...vestmentbubble.jpg/400px-Investmentbubble.jpg

Here's the breakdown of the 2009 American Recovery and Reinvestment Act....note the largest bubble....that fucking Marxist bastard.

Which bubble did teaching Chinese prostitutes to drink responsibly fit in?

Translation: Since you answered the question asked(how much went yo infrastructure) and found bout the MOST of ARRA went to TAX CUTS....and that isn't what you WANTED to hear...you have to deflect to something else.

 

[The Rabbi]

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikiped...vestmentbubble.jpg/400px-Investmentbubble.jpg

Here's the breakdown of the 2009 American Recovery and Reinvestment Act....note the largest bubble....that fucking Marxist bastard.

Which bubble did teaching Chinese prostitutes to drink responsibly fit in?

Translation: Since you answered the question asked(how much went yo infrastructure) and found bout the MOST of ARRA went to TAX CUTS....and that isn't what you WANTED to hear...you have to deflect to something else.

Actually most of it went to transfer payments.
But "tax cut" is a misnomer. Not all tax cuts are equal. The Dems' favorite of limited targeted tax cuts never work to stimulate anything except Democratic votes. Across the board permanent tax cuts actually accomplish something. I realize this distinction is too fine for your limited understanding of econ.
But at least you're admitting the stimulus failed.

 

[Claudette]

So we take taxpayer dollars to create public sector jobs that don't produce anything so people that produce have less money to spend.And this is a good thing?

It is in Shittingbulls biased estimation.

I guess he/she doesn't realize all Fed and public sector workers are payed with TAX DOLLARS and produce nothing.

As usual Shittingbull is a fucking idiot.

 

[Skull Pilot]

Do you really want to know what's hurting the economy?

it's the decline of small business

charles hugh smith-The Decline of Self-Employment and Small Business

United States? new business formation rate continues dropping steadily - On Small Business - The Washington Post

Those across-the-board declines suggest the country is growing steadily less entrepreneurial, and according to Litan, the trend must be reversed in order to strengthen the United States’ economic recovery.

We have crushed the entrepreneurial spirit under mountains of red tape, government regulation and confiscatory taxes.

 

[editec]

Do you really want to know what's hurting the economy?

it's the decline of small business

charles hugh smith-The Decline of Self-Employment and Small Business

United States? new business formation rate continues dropping steadily - On Small Business - The Washington Post

Those across-the-board declines suggest the country is growing steadily less entrepreneurial, and according to Litan, the trend must be reversed in order to strengthen the United States’ economic recovery.

We have crushed the entrepreneurial spirit under mountains of red tape, government regulation and confiscatory taxes.

Yes we have.

For instance, my tiny 501c-3 corporation spends roughly 3% of its gross revenue simply filing our taxes. That's not how much it pays as tax, that's JUST the cost of getting them prepared professionally because, despite the fact that our corporation activity is so simply to understand, the reportage of it is complex and confusing as hell.

And at the same time that we are imposing impossible standards on small businesses, we have given WELL CAPITALIZED CORPORATIONS every advantage.

 

[DiamondDave]

Public sector is still a drain.. period.. all must be funded thru taking away from the private sector where growth actually happens..

If there is truly a need for something that the government is providing (research, loans to students, etc) the private sector will indeed scramble and fight to provide it.. with competition, more choices, and better results (and almost assuredly a cheaper price to the customer)

 

[Stephanie]

The Op must work for the guberment...

NOTICE they don't worry about all the people who don't work for the guberment ? I guess according to them they aren't IMPORATANT people

I could be laid off every year in my job according to the budget..but hey, those poor government workers expect to be employed for LIFE I guess