Stimulus waste is good, don't you know? [The title of this post is a quote from the subtitle of a Washington Post opinion piece]
It's a little refreshing, actually, to have someone come out and say that waste is not only inevitable, but desirable, when it comes to stimulus spending:
When the whole point of a major government spending program is to stimulate the faltering economy as quickly as possible, what exactly counts as "wasted" money? After all, if some stimulus cash is misspent -- say an errant official or contractor buys himself a Cadillac or a Harley Davidson, only to suffer the full force of law -- might not such fraud boost the economy more than if the cash languished in a law-abiding state account?
Might not such fraud boost the economy more than if the cash languished in a law-abiding state account? You see, too much oversight and talk about "making sure taxpayer money is wisely spent" slows down how quickly the dollars get spent. Those unfortunate government officials, scared about potential investigations and bad press, will be too cautious and too slow to spend money.
Note, dear reader, that waste, even fraud, is assumed to be a necessary byproduct of government spending, by a proponent of government spending!
"If the goal for the stimulus spending is to minimize fraud and waste to the point of zero, I know how to do that: All I have to do is not spend the money," said Steven Schooner, co-director of George Washington University's Government Procurement Law Program. "Are we capable of grasping the concept that in a struggling economy, it's more important to throw money at the problem, even if it's possibly inefficient and possibly inaccurate?"
Nowhere, nowhere, in this article does anyone weigh the private sector alternative to public sector stimulus. This is the more fundamental, the more important, and, I think, the more obvious question. The quickest way to "inject" extra dollars into the economy--virtually instantaneous--is to let people keep they money they were expecting to send to Washington in the form of taxes. Instead of worrying about whether we should let more fraud occur to speed the spending, or be more fastidious about misappropriating public funds, whether it would take three years or five to inject stimulus, the full amount could instantly be made available, spendable, to private individuals and corporations. Without the overhead of government middlemen. And with virtually no risk of fraud. After all, who defrauds themselves when they're spending their own money?
The counter-argument, of course, is that this private sector spending wouldn't be "targeted," that we'd have to trust people with their own money, that they might save it instead of spending it (thereby making greater reserves available to banking institutions to loan). Every one of which arguments, of course, is moot, if we've now come to the point where we are arguing that a little more fraud and waste will speed the stimulus spending.
How targeted is that Cadillac or Harley Davidson?
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