Murray Rothbard |
Murray Rothbard is cackling and clapping from above.
From a Greg Mankiw post:
How the Govt Shutdown Affects GDP
In this interview, CEA chair Kevin Hassett (around minute 4:00) dismisses the adverse impact of the government shutdown on real GDP. It seems to me that he is more wrong than right. Kevin appears to be assuming that government workers don't produce anything of value when they are at work, or that they will make up all the undone work when they return, so making them stay at home has no significant economic impact.Naturally, the Harvard professor, establishment apologist, Mankiw goes on to argue that Hassett is wrong.
But every once and awhile a government official stumbles into truth. That is, he will use truth to defend some other part of government activity. This what Hassett was doing when he spoke truth about government employees being of no value. He was defending the "expand the government wall" shutdown so he briefly spoke the truth that we won't miss the government employees not working.
As Ron Paul, influenced by Rothbard, wrote in Liberty Defined: 50 Essential Issues That Affect Our Freedom:
It would be more accurate to subtract government spending from the GDP rather than adding it to it..War spending, bureaucratic agency spending, government enforcement spending are all added to GDP, when in fact most is negative to our freedom and a growing economy. Thus, the spending on such should be subtracted from GDP. And, it further means that Hassett, for a brief moment, was right. Government employees out of work won't result in any negative impact on GDP real growth.
-RW
I just don't know why (+G) rather than (-G) is not OBVIOUSLY wrong on the face of it. Don't these people THINK???? Where do they think the money comes from??
ReplyDeleteBTW, Merry Christmas to all.
Merry Christmas to Cap'n and to all!
DeleteMerry Christmas to you as well.
DeleteCheers
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