UPDATE:
"Government spending does not create wealth but devours it."
~ Manuel Suárez-Mier, from his (Spanish-language article) 'Fighting Against Poverty'
"Real, sustainable economic growth is not the result of high taxes, but of long-term sustainable capital growth and accumulation—and hence, ever-greater and ever-increasing productivity..
"Since government spending is overwhelmingly thrown away on consumption spending instead of on productive spending, however –practically every dollar that governments spend is consumption spending -- capital growth is hampered rather than helped, by high government spending. It’s a handbrake, not a help-mate."
7 comments:
I have never been entirely certain about this. I agree that in its current state government is a destructive entity. However, a legitimate government limited to protecting rights would have some productive activities. Military R&D is necessary to protecting rights, as our enemies aren't going to restrict themselves to current technology; those innovations would be government property, just as an innovation I make on company time is the property of my company. Military innovations can have civilian applications--see the history of CB radio and cell phones. I think it would be legitimate for the government to finance itself by charging royalties for the use of these patents, just as any other institution could. I will be the first to state that this system has a broad potential for abuse, but that's true about anything dealing with government.
True words!
Greetings from Poland!
The exception only proves the rule.
Being a legitimate function of government, and creating wealth are not the same thing. Prisons for instance are a legitimate function, but the don’t create wealth. Same goes for my lawyer. They’re what’s after called a “necessary evil” in common vernacular. When government is legitimate it provides the protection that enables wealth creation to occur, but doesn’t create wealth in itself.
I have provided a specific example of how the government can, in the pursuit of its legitimate function, create new technology which, were it in the hands of a private company, could produce wealth. This is not a hypothetical; this happened in WWII, and I could have given more examples than just the one I did. The question I am raising is, what do we do with such innovations? It's legitimate to say that the government, as the employer, owns the patent to these devices; it's also legitimate to say that we the people, whom the government represents and serves, own the patent.
This in no way implies that I believe ALL government activities are wealth-creating, nor that I believe that the government is generally wealth-creating, nor....well, anything else that you seem to be arguing against.
It's a lot more nuanced than this simplistic quote would suggest.
For example, the irony that we're discussing this on the (government created) internet.
The simple answer to the objections raised is in the original link. But to help out, I've added the even simpler and more direct answer as an update.
PS: I don't think Barry understands either irony, or the internet.
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