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From: mwm@ea.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.politics
Subject: Re: The WSJ on Reaganomics
Message-ID: <22400044@ea.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 23-Nov-84 16:27:00 EST
Article-I.D.: ea.22400044
Posted: Fri Nov 23 16:27:00 1984
Date-Received: Mon, 26-Nov-84 08:03:09 EST
References: <421@hogpd.UUCP>
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Nf-ID: #R:hogpd:-42100:ea:22400044:000:1149
Nf-From: ea!mwm    Nov 23 15:27:00 1984

/***** ea:net.politics / dciem!mmt /  8:22 pm  Nov 20, 1984 */
================
... Back to 
basic economic truth: the cost to the citizenry of government is the
total it SPENDS (plus some), not what it taxes or borrows.
...
================
No it isn't.  When the Government spends money, it transfers money from
one group of people to another.  There is no NET cost to society, since
each dollar transferred can be used to buy something, whether a civil
servant buys it or whether the worker who built an aircraft buys it.

Martin Taylor
{allegra,linus,ihnp4,floyd,ubc-vision}!utzoo!dciem!mmt
{uw-beaver,qucis,watmath}!utcsrgv!dciem!mmt
/* ---------- */

Sorry, but there *is* a net cost when the government spends money. Much
(all?) of that money goes from people who produce (it just about has to) to
people who *don't* produce, and results in a disincentive to produce *at
both ends*.

Sweden is a nice place to look for an example of this at one end - people
are refusing raises in favor of longer vacations, etc. After all, you can
go from a salary of ~5K to ~25K with no noticeable increase in income, so
why not take more time off?

	<mike