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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: TimF who wrote (361201)	12/3/2007 1:54:50 PM
From: combjelly	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1574199

"But all the money spent on the museums or aircraft carriers represents money not used for private consumption or investment." Huh? Most of the money goes to either salaries or profits for the contractors or subcontractors. To the extent that it wouldn't be available for private consumption or investment in reasonably short order would be for whatever foreign content is used. And for government contracts, that tends to be pretty small.

To: TimF who wrote (361201)	12/3/2007 1:56:51 PM
From: Road Walker	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 1574199

But in many cases when you consider ALL of the costs and benefits, the costs are larger than the benefits. First, not all business or personal spending is productive. In fact much isn't. Throw out that assumption and things become much more close between the value of government and business and/or personal spending. Second, the end product isn't the only value of government spending. Even in a worst case 'bridge to nowhere' companies provide steel; engineers, architects and workers are employed. Commerce is 'created', which creates wealth. In fact, to those of you who believe the Bush tax cuts made the recession softer I would argue that the increased government spending (by issuing debt) did more to stimulate the economy than the tax cuts.