If you knew a dollar invested in something would wind up losing more than a dollar, would you consider that a good investment?
The government does just that when it starts spending taxpayer dollars or borrowed money which future generations must pay back with interest. In the video below Professor Antony Davies of Duquesne University explains the unseen costs of government spending and the best way to stimulate the economy: the private sector.
Professor Antony Davies explains:
“There’s a misconception that when the government spends money it creates jobs. … What we’re forgetting is that the money doesn’t fall from space. The government obtains the money by taxing or borrowing. And when it does those things jobs are destroyed.
So at the end of the day the government isn’t creating jobs, it’s moving jobs. Jobs leave where the government taxes and borrows and appear where the government spends.”
Professor Davies summarizes what the economic data shows:
“In the best case scenario what we see is still no relationship between government spending and economic growth. In the worst-case scenario, we actually see a negative relationship. That is, as the government spends more money, the economy actually contracts.”
