Long-term Cost Is Steep | Tad DeHaven | Cato Institute: Commentary

Long-term Cost Is Steep | Tad DeHaven | Cato Institute: Commentary: "Unfortunately for proponents of government spending as a panacea, there can be no 'success' without failure. The reason is simple: the government can't spend money without taxing it out of the economy first, or issuing debt, which begets future taxes. When the government taxes something, the result is less of that something. One of the chief rationales politicians give for raising taxes on cigarettes is that it'll result in less smoking. Why would the result be any different for taxes on economic productivity?

In other words, the government can spend billions of dollars 'creating' jobs -- technically a success -- but the cost of those jobs in terms of reduced economic productivity is a failure. And that failure equals lost jobs or jobs not created that otherwise would have been in the absence of the taxes the government needed to 'create' those jobs in the first place."

'As President Barack Obama inadvertently admitted last week, "UPS and FedEx are doing just fine . . . It's the post office that's always having problems."

The Bush administration oversaw one of the most massive increases in federal spending in history. Yet here we are in the midst of the second recession since Bush took office, and a deep one at that. If government spending results in economic growth shouldn't the Bush years have been an economic boom?'