Well, there's more than that though. Expanding and improving certain infrastructures via public spending can lead to increases in private revenue. When it comes to actually generating money, military expenditures are some of the least efficient. Nearly anything involving military action leads to a net loss in revenue -- unless you count indirect gains involving strategic influence in global markets.Lotta_Drool wrote:
Not sure what the fixation is on "Generating Money" but the real debate you two are trying to have is the old "Creation of Wealth" vs "Debt".Jaekus wrote:
If you can't see how the government genrerates money I suggest you go back to high school.
The Government regulates wealth and debt that is created by people. In doing so it "balances" the debt load on the private sector through monetary polices (tax rate, interest rate, tax system).
The Dollar gets its value by the debt load it represents (debt creates the dollar so the dollar = wealth). Wealth is created many ways and there is NOT a fixed amount of wealth in the world like many people believe.
This Debt load right now for a US dollar is spread among 300+ million people, in the '70s it was spread among ~100 million people. Our government loves immigration because of this, it keeps the paramid scheme going awhile longer.
Physical Wealth is like owning your house, a business with a factory with equipment all paid for, anything material without a lean against it, something that can acquire another's debt (dollar). In reality the government owns most physical wealth in America. This is why we have property tax, the government owns your house(land) in reality and through this system ultimately owns most wealth its citizens create or aquire. This is what balances the debt load on the dollar.
If I really wanted to argue with Lowing I would just say that America could generate money by building a military and then using it to overthrow another country and then charge property tax to the people that live there.
For example, the only profitable angle to the Iraq War for the economy overall is causing oil prices to spike -- which can benefit American oil companies and multinational oil companies that are based in America.
By contrast, public investment in education can lead to some of the greatest gains for the economy. Granted, this is still dependent on the quality of management.