carey_jim

Obama's Public Spending Program: A Very Expensive Farce

Obama was elected by people who think he will DO something to help them economically, and a statistical analysis of the voters who elected Obama tells us that many of them were people of color and of the working class.

Public perception of the poor is that government can help them by spending money on programs designed to help them. Therefore, Obama will spend government money to help them.

Academic economists tell us that the government usually makes things worse by spending money, and that the private sector can usually do better. But, as has been duly noted by another commenter here, economists get a lot of things wrong.

It's ironic that most Democrats and Republicans, and Herbert Hoover AND Franklin D. Roosevelt, were against the socialistic plan to insure bank deposits (FDIC), proposed by a cranky, obscure Alabama Congressman, Henry Steagall, in 1933. It passed anyway and, miraculously, the Supreme Court let it stand in 1935, probably because it was generally accepted that it did what no one expected it do do, even Henry Steagall, it saved the banking industry.

Economic measures which can harm the economy overall, such as a steep rise in the minimum wage, can still help very large groups of poor people.

There are more poor people than rich people and occasionally they vote for their self-interest, even if it harms the rest of the economy.

It looks like the poor people care more about themselves this time around than the overall health of the economy. Not surprising.