Chris B

Defining Government Expenditure vs. Investment

Agreed Smarty_Pants,

For that sum of money, we could have purchased universal healthcare, energy independence, free university educations for our brightest students, AND the advanced technology and knowledge base that could keep the US the dominant superpower in the 21st century.

Instead, we have done the equivalent of bailing out pets.com or furniture.com in 2000 or the typewriter factories in the 1980's. Every major investment - excuse me - expense of the last two decades has been for things that have no future - Iraq, Big 3 SUV's, overpriced exurban McMansion mortgages, oil. No wonder people hate paying taxes. The ROI is near zero.

This is how you dismantle an empire. Invest in saving the past instead of producing the future. I hope we're OK with 100 years of Chinese dominance because we are the ones making it happen.


On Dec 02 11:58 AM Smarty_Pants wrote:

> "All of the iffy securities that are weighing down the banking system
> represents money already spent on real projects or consumption."
>
>
> Two points:
>
> 1) Are CDOs or CDSs expenditures on a real project or consumption?
> No, they are transfers of risk that went bad. It is simply agreening
> to pay for someone else's mistakes after the fact.
>
> 2) Even ignoring the fact that much of the derivative content of
> the bailout was made in non-real projects, what the author leaves
> unstated is that these retro-active expenditures were for projects
> that FAILED.
>
> Granted, the gub'mint is pretty good at spending money on something
> and then messing things up, but to spend money on something AFTER
> it is a proven failure has to be the pinnacle of foolishness.