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203 Comments
- novenator, on 11/13/2009, -20/+46FTA - "Glenn Beck would describe anything like the Works Progress Administration as a plan to recruit pro-Obama brownshirts — but we should note, for the record, that at their peak, the W.P.A. and the Civilian Conservation Corps employed millions of Americans, at relatively low cost to the budget."
And Beck would be joined by every right wing pundit and GOP mouthpiece who is more interested in hurting Obama than having people employed. Mind you that these are the SAME people who commonly refer to wages increasing as "wage inflation" and purposefully *try* to keep unemployment at at least 5% to make people hungry and give them an incentive to bust their chops for a nickel.
My roommate has a job that is directly funded by the ARRA (stimulus). He is doing grueling infrastructure work, but it is being done right and should last for generations. Works programs...well, they work in times like these. When the Great Recession recedes, then we will deal with paying back the debt incurred from temporary labor (the ARRA only accounts for 16% of the fiscal 2009 deficit by the way), and in the meantime, it is giving people jobs, putting food on the table, and even giving them enough confidence to spend on this potentially dire holiday season. - PhilPerspective, on 11/13/2009, -26/+52One can only wonder whether FDR would be successful today with Congress as it is presently constituted. We need Obama to try and be more like FDR though. Show people that he is being responsive to the people. And browbeat Congress if he must. Failure is not an option.
- sheeplescareme, on 11/13/2009, -40/+65LoL.
Let's ask the gooferment to raise taxes or go further into debt to hire people to dig a hole and then fill it back up with dirt.
"And in normal times there’s something to be said for American-style “free to lose” labor markets, in which employers can fire workers at will but also face few barriers to new hiring."
Or we can just tell businesses that they can't lay people off...or that they have to hire on more people...or raise their wages...which is brilliant because in tough economic times, businesses, especially small ones, aren't hurting and can totally afford it.
Krugmanomics is *****. Gov't can't give what it doesn't have, and all that it has right now is debt. More debt, more taxes, and more regs is not the freaking answer. Even the idiot FDR realized it, admitted it, and gave up. - rheobase, on 11/13/2009, -4/+27You want to create jobs? Start busting up monopolies and "too big to fail" companies. Instant job creation, at the cost of lower corporate profits.
- sheeplescareme, on 11/13/2009, -19/+31Doing nothing is an option, one we've taken before with great success. He is advocating doing something. Gov't does one thing really well, esp regarding employment/business/economics - it completely ***** it up. Big business or small business (however you choose to define it - the current admin defines big biz as >$250,000/yr, which is usually a half-dozen employees or less), gov't needs to stay out. Period. Bubbles pop. You can keep artifically inflating them, but they will pop and the bigger the bubble is, the more it's going to hurt.
- novenator, on 11/13/2009, -3/+15Funny to see all of the free-market-is-god people ripping Krugman a new one on this thread, without them ever reading the article or responding to the basic thing it demonstrates: Germany is having a much higher success rate combating unemployment than the US is.
- PeppermintPig, on 11/13/2009, -10/+21"And we've seen how well private enterprise does left to their own devices."
Have we really? Lobbying government for favors doesn't quite fit in with that assumption.
"Lastly, you do understand that if you do nothing then unemployment will get a lot worse than it is now, right?"
So continue to do things that would make it worse?? - bluebottle7, on 11/13/2009, -7/+17Krugman never admits to being wrong... he advocated for the housing bubble and when that failed he advocated for massive bailouts. Now that those are failing he's advocating for something else- basically telling the government to legislate jobs into existence.
This is Krugman saying the same thing he's always said- that government is some sort of economic panacea that can and should be used at every opportunity. Leave the government out of this- if we had done that a few decades ago we wouldn't be in the mess we're in now. - Opiate, on 11/13/2009, -12/+22Lol at proposing more new deals and stimulus.
- NorthMass, on 11/13/2009, -10/+20"And we've seen how well private enterprise does left to their own devices. Even Alan "The Maestro" Greenspan admitted that he had misplaced faith with the titans of industry."
dude, Alan Greenspan is about a good a representative of laissez-faire economics as George Bush is of pacifism. he did nothing to bring us back to laissez-faire capitalism, which involves having no central bank, or at least letting banks set their own interest rates rather than the Fed heavily influencing their rates.
"Lastly, you do understand that if you do nothing then unemployment will get a lot worse than it is now, right?"
Yes, and we have to live with that. Either we have to live with a 1-3 year economic depression with 15-20% unemployment, or we can live with hyperinflation in 5 years. We cannot choose hyperinflation, that will result in chaos. - somberlaine, on 11/13/2009, -2/+12while there are a lot of employers who had to lay off employees, there are a others who used to the economic crisis as an excuse to reduce staff as a profit making measure- the american workforce is highly productive now.
- fieryseraph, on 11/13/2009, -6/+15Your clueless FDR worship is completely absurd. The man who cared so much about providing for the masses while shunning those who care only for themselves was the same one who burned food and slaughtered farm animals (to prop up prices for farmers) AT THE SAME TIME people were starving to death? Yep, sounds like the great caretaker of the masses to me.
And people have LONG realized that we need to be our brother's keeper. How did people get health care before medicare/medicaid? Doctors gave it to them for free, or they got it from charitable or fraternal organizations! And guess what? It worked out just fine!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VYR4YmIH3SA - NorthMass, on 11/13/2009, -23/+31It is clear that Krugman does not even know what inflation is, or he simply doesn't care about it. He does not ever take into account the massive inflation constantly increasing deficits are going to cause, as his ideas would only add on more to the deficit. It is all about jobs with him. While everyone having jobs is a noble goal, it is not feasible, and just because it is a noble goal does not excuse trying to achieve that goal when it is not possible. Our economy cannot be propped up anymore without destroying our currency, and people need to understand how bad things will be if we literally destroy the Dollar.
Would it be better if everyone had jobs, with a massively devalued currency that would leave tens of millions starving like in the U.S.S.R., or would it be better if there is 15% unemployment but at least the currency wasn't ruined and people could still feed themselves through government programs and charity while slashing spending? While in principle I oppose socialist programs, I recognize we can't cut them all at once, and they could help feed families while we go through a recovery phase of 1-3 brutal years. But that is a much better scenario than hyperinflation or severe continual stagflation, like Krugman's policies would achieve. - kemp34, on 11/13/2009, -3/+11In a true free society, any group of individuals could join into a VOLUNTARY collective.
- Rothbardosaurus, on 11/13/2009, -4/+11Government jobs are by definition jobs that are unprofitable to perform, and therefore add nothing to the economy, and more likely detract from it. If they WERE profitable, beneficial, economy-promoting jobs, the market would already be seeking to perform them without government intervention.
Government is a parasite on the economy. The more it spends, the more it has to extract from productive people. Your "multiplier effect" is a fantasy.
Please turn off MSNBC. - DrNemo, on 11/13/2009, -17/+24Why are we still listening to Krugman? If keynesianism worked we would know it by now.
- hblask, on 11/13/2009, -11/+18I wonder if Krugman ever gets tired of being completely wrong every time he writes something?
They say the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. Well, where does that put Krugman, whose entire theory seems to be "if it failed the first dozen times, do ten times as much of it the next time."
Guess what? Taking money from the productive economy and giving it to the political economy can never, ever, create growth. It's impossible. - NorthMass, on 11/13/2009, -18/+25FDR was never successful in the first place. His New Deal policies were put into stone for 5 years, and after 5 years of very mediocre results while running large deficits the policies had to be stopped because you can't just keep running up massive deficits. Then unemployment jumped back up to 20%, and FDR's failed policies did nothing but stall a potential recovery for 5-7 years.
And no, they couldn't have kept the policies going without eventually massively devaluing the dollar, and Keynesians like Krugman never seem to care about how inflation can cause chaos. - LinuxPerson, on 11/13/2009, -3/+10"Maybe after Mises gets a clue..."
Internet troll claims to know more about economics than a legendary economist... why am I not surprised? - Pixelante, on 11/13/2009, -0/+7It WAS difficult to fire or lay people off in Europe. And now, thanks to short-term contracts, you can hire someone for 6 months, pay him a pittance, and then let him go. It's called "flexible work".
- kemp34, on 11/13/2009, -2/+8Looks like someone is running into the "government as only socio-economic actor" fallacy that big government supporters consistently fall victim to.
Government doing nothing =/ everyone doing nothing. - thegreenspanput, on 11/13/2009, -6/+12Krugman is one of the worst contemporary economists out.
- photek00, on 11/13/2009, -13/+19Sorry right wingers, you are wrong.
More government funded jobs means more government revenue through taxes, not less. These new jobs create more jobs when wages are spent,"multiplier effect." The best part is, when the government borrows to pay for the new jobs, it gets a sweet deal because it pays little to no interest on the new money it borrows. This is because the bonds it sells to raise money and pay for the new jobs are in demand while inflation is low. Good deal for tax payers. Also, whats more valuable to you if you're unemployed, a conservative tax cut worth $5,000 a year, or a $40,000 a year job. I'll tax the job. My resume and bank account will thank me.
Also, business tax cuts lead to failure. Right now, business are ether loosing money or barely making a profit. Tax cuts are designed to boost existing profits(the bigger the profit the bigger the boost). Business tax cuts right now wouldn't boost anything because profits are too low. Also, since inflation is low because of lack of demand, a tax cut(for the business making money) would encourage increased production. The more you produce, the greater the money you stand to make in profits and tax cuts. Low demand plus high supply brought by tax cuts means deflation and were all unemployed.
Please turn off Fox News. - NorthMass, on 11/13/2009, -11/+17we have tried his theories, they don't work. Republican and Democrat administrations have both tried Keynesian economics, Hoover, FDR, Carter, Bush, and now Obama, they have all tried and horribly failed doing so(BTW, one of the most absurd myths is that Hoover and Bush were laissez-faire, they are barely any better than FDR and Obama).
Yet we have also tried doing nothing except cutting spending and taxes, and it worked wonderfully. No one talks about the 1920-1921 depression, because it only lasted for a year, because the government did NOTHING and didn't try to print money and slash interest rates to create a phony recovery, it just slashed spending and taxes.
http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=9880 - CosmicSurfer, on 11/13/2009, -20/+26FDR took reality and cleared up a mess created by a corrupt system (the leaders called "capitalism") that allowed millions to starve and die but I guess Jr High reading of the Grapes of Wrath taught us nothing other than Steinbeck wrote hard core, depressing stories that the Cliff Notes couldn't get quite right so our book report never got an A.
Never ceases to amaze me the short sightedness of humans especially in the tiny blip in the Universe that this country IS.
Our refusal to take responsibility for our fellow humans and our refusal to understand that until we do, we all go down has become our new accepted way of being.
Most people alive now don't have a clue about the Great Depression (the last one of any memory - there were Great Depressions over the entire existence of this country) - only a few left who lived it but do we listen to them? Of course not - some old, "ill-informed seniors" as someone on digg referred to the generations beyond him a few days ago.
FDR took reality and cleared up a mess created by a corrupt system (the leaders called "capitalism") that allowed millions to starve and die but I guess Jr High reading of the Grapes of Wrath taught us nothing other than Steinbeck wrote hard core, depressing stories that the Cliff Notes couldn't get quite right so our book report never got an A.
The revisionists did a great job of screwing up this history
FDR took a system that had DEPRESSIONS inherent in the very structure and smoothed it out causing an uproar with the very few - those who comprised the concentrated wealth in the country from Ford and Sinclair to DuPont and Bush - America's piggish Nouveau Riche that skimmed the cream and left the curdled mass at the bottom of a month old milk carton for the rest. They sucked this country dry, sat out the years where things evened out for them and murdered millions in the process. FDR cared nothing for the individual - the man with a single problem could go jump as long as the masses were cared for. Yes, that was socialist, but the only reality is that we ARE our brother's keeper.
He didn't even like many of the programs he had to put in place to save people from sure starvation and there was starvation-as soon as he could, he closed them down because he knew they were not good for the long term. Full government employment for the masses was not the answer for the long term but for the short term, mandatory - building an infrastructure that had been left to rot and creating cities where only shacks and tenements stood with disease and filth with no clean water or medical assistance-where children slaved from the time they could walk until an early death from emphysema, food poisoning, pneumonia, TB, Typhoid, small pox, diphtheria, influenza, starvation, rickets, kwashiorkor, and polio.
FDR KNEW that unless there was a complete social restructuring from the ground up, we would not last. Unless we looked out for everyone in this country, equally, allowing for the survival of every person, we could not sustain a nation because we are our brother's keeper
He set up the Middle Class of the United States to grow rapidly, strongly and created a country with a strong infrastructure that should have been self sustaining with the systems in place.
But that seems to have been removed from the psyche; cut out of the story; erased from the conscience of our society.
With that rewriting of history, we have lost the premise we as a species had inherent for survival. We have lost that which sentient beings have known for thousands of years. Even the so-called lower species understand that basic premise from elephants that will destroy a village for its killing of a baby elephant to a lioness pride that will protect ALL the young in the group - they know inherently that unless they do, there is no existence for them in the long run. THEY MUST protect the group or the group will perish. Only man is so short sighted and has lost that basic element of existence... WE are our brother's keeper - until we once again recognize that fact, we will continue towards self - destruction. - NorthMass, on 11/13/2009, -9/+15Again, you clearly have no idea what Hoover did as he was almost just as bad as FDR when it came to meddling with the economy. He ramped up taxes, spending, and the Smoot–Hawley Tariff Act was one of the most interventionist and stupid economic policies ever pursued.
FDR even attacked Hoover for spending too much in the 1932 election, and people in FDR's campaign said Hoover was bringing us towards socialism. - OafBoaster, on 11/13/2009, -4/+10Ugh, this article is terrible and is written by someone who literally knows zilch about market movement. The 1920-21 "depression" was nothing in comparison to that of the '29 crash. Per capita income went up less than 50% by the end of the 20's, but the market went exponential and more than quadrupled. Lax regulation on margin requirements led to a massive influx of people "riding the bull" of the mid to late roaring 20's. The number of people (and corporations) invested had increased exponentially from the early 20's. By the time retracements hit the market in the late 20's, people were so heavily leveraged that they quickly hit margin calls. SO many investors were heavily leveraged and hit margin calls that it caused a wave of selling which sent the market plummeting.
On top of individuals losing money, corporate investment plummeted. Banks lost money, people stopped spending, and the economy came to a halt. When people stop spending, banks can't loan money, and debt they were owed wasn't being paid back. On top of that, they also lost money in the market. So now you have a huge problem, NO money is flowing through the system. This led to the bank failures which is what turned a market retracement into a depression. And further, a deflationary period like the great depression makes it more difficult to pay back debt because your owed dollar value rises in addition to interest. Our bank bailout and recent liquidity injection was handled beautifully. Had it not been handled so well, you'd likely be on the street right now.
There's a reason these guys have the jobs they do and you aren't the one in charge of this country's fiscal policy. Think about all the schooling they go through that isn't just an internet movie and a handful of Ron Paul books. - pilgrim3970, on 11/13/2009, -6/+12"I believe that a large enough conventional stimulus would do the trick"
because similar measures have done wonders up until now. Where, Mr. Krugman will the money for this stimulus come from? Our Federal government is strapped for money as it is. What needs to happen is for everyone to leanr to live within their means. For the Federal government, this will mean making some difficult decisions about everything from cutting the pork to cutting back on the money we send around the world to buy friendships. - roddack, on 11/13/2009, -9/+15Is spending doesn't work then double down on the spending. If that doesn't work rinse and repeate
Then again this could have been avoided by not playing the bubble burst game that we have to come to love for the last 70ish years.
Hooray fiat currency
But hey it only took unemployment until 1946 to reach its pre-1930's level and I am sure that has nothing to do with that little skirmish we happened to get involved in. - roddack, on 11/13/2009, -4/+10What the hell are you smoking and where the hell can I get some?
- kaelyiesta, on 11/13/2009, -5/+11'Doing nothing'. How someone can think that letting people decide how to solve these problems without being forced into central mandates is 'doing nothing' is hard to conceive of.
Do you understand the nature of economy? There are hundreds of millions of us doing something everyday. That, not one size fits all coercive mandates sent down from people with no means to judge the value of their guesses, will and is improving our economy.
Oh, and to suggest he isn't advocating one size fits all rules is absurd. Unless these 'rules' allow that each individual is fully able to react to their unique economic conditions how they see fit, these solutions are indeed one size fits all. And if that were the case, then one could hardly call them rules at all. - ghengiskhan1, on 11/13/2009, -2/+8Maybe everything he writes is sarcasm and we just dont know it and the joke is on us. Could there be any other explanation? I mean, NO ONE could be wrong this much and still be alive.
- KennedyWally, on 11/13/2009, -17/+23Krugman is absolutely CLUELESS. He supported the bailouts. He supported Greenspan and Bernanke as they raped the Dollar. Krugman supports out of control spending and endless deficits.
Krugman would get his ass handed to him by Peter Schiff in a debate on economics. Why is he ducking Schiff? - Hecubus452, on 11/14/2009, -1/+6Paul Krugman knocks my socks off every time.
- methdwman3, on 11/13/2009, -4/+9It's only 16% of the deficit because they have, as usual, pushed the paying for it part out as long as they could. Would be like saying you bought a $5k TV, put $4k on a credit card, and then said you only spent $1k in 2009. ***** don't fly.
- NorthMass, on 11/13/2009, -14/+19(1.) We need deflation to correct the reckless overspending we have had the last 10 years thanks to artificially low interest rates from the Fed. Housing prices were double what they used to be when adjusted for inflation!
http://www.speculativebubble.com/images/homevalues ...
There is no way that is sustainable, we had to let the market correct itself because we didn't let the market do its job in the first place. Stimulus and bailouts are only letting the bubble last longer, which only delays the inevitable deflationary forces in housing and other sectors while bringing upon even more inflation thanks to more debt. So in the end we get left with a ruined Dollar, but we prolonged the depression from starting for a few years.
(2.) With all due respect, you clearly have no idea what Hoover did, as you buy into the false rewriting of history that he let the market correct itself.
The truth about Hoover
http://mises.org/story/2902 - reticulate, on 11/13/2009, -7/+12@govdoesnotwork: I've read Mises. And, to put not too fine a point on it, he's wrong.
I did kind of point out exactly ***** why in my comment, but you're apparently blind to it. Try again. - Zomgondo, on 11/13/2009, -5/+10You're getting buried because you pointed out that ARRA is actually doing something useful, but I 100% agree with you. The vast majority of construction around here right now is funded by the stimulus package, and it's all things that needed to be done anyway.
One day everyone around here will look back at the Great Recession and think of it as the time the government finally fixed all the potholes :) - funkedup, on 11/13/2009, -0/+5Shhhh. People aren't supposed to know about this...
- funkedup, on 11/13/2009, -0/+5Failure is always an option when the government tries to fix problems they create.
- rrwest, on 11/13/2009, -3/+8Hey, dude, he wasn't asking for the government to hire more people, only change incentives for private businesses to retain employees.
And this isn't "Krugernomics", either, its Germany's response to the financial collapse caused largely by the US sup-prime mortgage collapse and all the dominoes which were attached to sub-prime mortgages.
During the 1980s, when much of North America suffered double digit unemployment, Germant didn't.
Why?
Because businesses and governments there understand that they will suffer if too many people are out of work anywhere in the country (think Detroit, Flint, Pittsburgh, Salem, Ore., etc.) and can't afford to buy goods and services.
Businesses may be profit driven at the bottom line, but if you are the only business left standing in a depressed economy and no-one can afford your stuff, you will also fall.
For every job lost, another ten are at risk of being lost. Thats the sobering fact of local economies.
And for every business thinking of insurance premiums rather than their neighbors (who may have been laid off by that very employer), then you don't deserve to be in business at all.
We are all in this together, which is why we will all fall with the "me first, me only" attittude that North America encourages in business across the board. That attitude caused the collapse in the first place. - pilgrim3970, on 11/13/2009, -1/+6Because those in charge are clueless and surrounded by yes men and women so they are left with little besides throwing money at the problem.
- ryanreisiger, on 11/13/2009, -6/+11If you had put some extra effort in and did some research outside of history class you would learn that there is a cycle of economic growth and recession and that America has had several depressions in which the government allowed the market to correct itself. A process that took one or two years. You'd also learn that the Great Depression lasted 16 years because rather than letting the market correct itself the FDR administration intervened excessively causing unpredictability, disruptions, and the missallocation of resources.
- Pixelante, on 11/13/2009, -0/+5He stares at you. This means you're a goat.
- DrNemo, on 11/13/2009, -1/+6How stupid it is to ignore the business cycle and attribute the depression to women's suffrage. You say Mises was wrong? You don't really refute any of his points, even though you claim you've read him. Mises was part of the few that predicted the depression, but that doesn't matter to you? Didn't Keynes lost a few feathers in the stock market crash?
Inflation created an unstable boom that led to a bust. And since history repeats itself, it's the exact same thing that happened to us today. We don't have a New Deal but massive bailouts and spending and it's not getting us out of the turmoil, again. But things were worse for business back then, because there wasn't as much legislation back then. Business of today have incorporated the legislative burden that was introduced in the '30s.
The great depression wasn't a failure of business but of government and banking. If only Hoover and subsequently FDR let the market clear the mess, we wouldn't be speaking of a great depression today. The depression wouldn't have been great but mild like the recessions of the 1800's, before central banking et al.
People didn't eat thanks to the New Deal. There was too many farmers because of subsidies and too much production. That led to the government to store grain and kill livestock, only to prop up the price of agricultural products for the benefit of the farmers. The massive distortion and misallocation of resource, and all the new legislation prolonged the depression and made it great. Markets can clear. The government can only make things worse as we have seen countless times. It's unfortunate that people like you, because of agenda or idiocy, don't learn from history. - govtdoesnotwork, on 11/13/2009, -5/+10Factual-0 FAIL. Prove Hoover WAS NOT the big spender Mises correctly says he was, or STFU with your clueless bs. The ball's in your court, and so far you're only missing.
- OafBoaster, on 11/13/2009, -12/+16How about we stop getting idiots who still quote Mises and instead get some people who are up to date on institutional economics and a much broader spectrum of economic thought? Seriously, this Ron Paulite "End the Fed" BS needs to stop. The guy is a doctor. His economic adviser is a moron who has lost people a fortune over the last decade. Neither are qualified to be making any sort of economic statements or dictating policy. The same goes for the retards who directed Money Masters. Greenspan, a disciple of Rand's objectivism and full-fledged anti-regulation kind of guy has come out and stated that he was WRONG.
If you want some history.. how about we start with ~1820 when corporate charters were taken out of the control of the state? Why don't we go back to the "founding fathers" line people sit around repeating and look at how they were vehemently against globalized industry like the East India Company? You can't quote Jefferson etc. without taking the whole of their thought and the times into account. Publicly traded companies are pretty much beyond the realm of our countries founding principles, but judging by their opinions of JSC's, they probably wouldn't be too happy about them!
Let's move forward a little bit and look at the real problem in the Great Depression: liquidity. NOT government spending. An equities market is absolutely nothing like the "free market" holy grail people want to believe in. The stock market is a beast at best. In its early days it was emotion, speculation, and a smidge of value represented in a series of bets. The same kind of leveraging that took place with stocks then BASICALLY took place with collateralized debt obligations prior to this recession. When you're leveraged and your position retraces, you lose more money than you invested to begin with. When this happens, you have nothing to spend. What happens when people have nothing to spend? Growth halts and markets crash into a vicious cycle. The Fed exists to feed liquidity into a system to prevent a deflationary cycle. Deflation increases foreign debt by making it more difficult to pay back. - Wosat, on 11/13/2009, -4/+8If more government funded jobs meant more government revenue through taxes, then why doesn't the government just keep hiring 'till they erase the deficit?
- kemp34, on 11/13/2009, -4/+8Big government spenders always fall back on the old "the government didn't spend enough" line when their policies fail.
We have had keynesianism for decades, it is a failed policy. - Rothbardosaurus, on 11/14/2009, -1/+5rrwest: there is no such thing as a "public sector." There is consent and there is force. The world of commerce, charity and fraternal organizations is based on consent. Government is nothing but naked force. Civilization grows out of mutual consent among the people. Force is the stuff of barbarism.
novenator: yes, please, privatize defense. That way the defense organization is restricted in its funding by what the people being defended are willing to pay for. I can guarantee this country wouldn't have signed up for a multi-trillion dollar global empire and perpetual war if people actually had to pay their share for it directly.
ericthesalmon: profit is how you can calculate the effectiveness of a given course of action. If people want it, there will be profit to be had in providing it. If they don't want it, it won't be profitable. Yes this applies to roads, and no, I'm not talking about toll booths every 50 feet -- the market is smarter than that, smarter than you for damn sure.
Government does not have profit-and-loss indicators because it extracts almost 100% of its revenue through force (taxes) or fraud (deficit spending), so its income is independent of its actual benefit to society. If a government program sucks, it's difficult to tell very quickly just how bad it is. This is why government programs are routinely inefficient, poorly run, and overly bureaucratic. Government is incapable of economic calculation.
This is why it is a supreme absurdity for the President or Congress of the United States to claim to create jobs or improve the economy. -
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