Comment 27242

By geoff's two cents (anonymous) | Posted November 09, 2008 at 04:57:13

A. Smith, I understand your point. . . to an extent anyways. On a very basic level, it's like raising a child - You spoil him/her, and he/she won't learn how to take care of themselves.

After "Doing it Wrong" 's comment, I'm sure you're perfectly aware that you are demonstrating a correlation, and not necessarily a cause.

More Importantly, this correlation can be read another way. What about the possibility that the decline in government spending is actually immediately preceded by an economic turnaround (or, equally, that government officials predicate their spending cuts on a positive economic forecast), thus making a decline in spending politically feasible? This, at any rate, seems to be an equally logical interpretation of the numbers you bring to the table.

I'm sure you will also admit that economies prosper and decline according to criteria other than government spending.

I don't have the numbers at hand, but I'm sure that Burmese government spending increased markedly in the aftermath of the tsunami. However, it would truly be a leap of faith to assume that the correlation of increased government spending and near economic collapse indicates the adverse effect of the former on the latter. In this particular case, an increase in government spending is symptomatic of economic hardship, not the cause.

Finally, where you and I might perhaps diverge is that I do not recognize economic productivity as 'the' supreme good (I say 'perhaps' because I do not know your position on this for certain - It's a semi-informed guess). There are contingencies that call for government spending, the success or failure of which is not necessarily measured in dollars or finite quantities.

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