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Politics : A US National Health Care System? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Road Walker who wrote (9665)	9/21/2009 3:22:39 PM
From: TimF	Respond to of 42652

There isn't any contradiction between "The government does more good than harm for the economy" (or even the same phrase with the "maybe by 100x", or even dropping the maybe) and "The majority of it" (problems with, and possible decline of competition in some areas) "is the government's fault". One is a (slightly) specific problem, one's an overall measure of a whole collection of complex issues. Also you might be surprised but I agree with you that the government does more good than harm for the economy. The 100x might eve be too low, anarchy isn't usually good for the economy. But an overwhelming majority of the benefit could be gained with much smaller government. Depending on how you see military and strategic issues and their impact on the economy, some might even argue vastly smaller government. (I might agree on a day to day basis, but once in a great while you REALLY need a strong military, and more often it might be beneficial without quite the level of need, and that's just considering active use of it, passively the deterrent value it provides is worth a lot. Still, speaking strictly in terms of economic benefits, and not considering other issues, we could get by with a smaller military.) As government gets bigger and bigger its reaches in to areas where its heavy involvement is more and more questionable. At the very least we are facing seriously diminishing returns, and I think in many cases new expansions bring negative return, at least when you consider the opportunity costs of not using the resources in the private sector. Government isn't "better at everything", as it does more and more it moves away from the "low hanging fruit", through the "difficult but positive", to the "questionable", and eventually to the "clearly negative".

To: Road Walker who wrote (9665)	9/21/2009 5:26:30 PM
From: i-node	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 42652

The government does much more good than harm for the economy, maybe by 100X. I'm not quite sure how one puts a number on such a thing. The remark is so broad and sweeping I don't know how one makes sense of what you said. Government clearly has a role and there are some things government does INFINITELY better since private enterprise simply could not do it at all -- for example, making law, running the court systems, national defense, national intelligence operations, and certain infrastructure items like the Interstate highway system. On a smaller scale, it is totally sensible to have basic city services like water and trash. But there are all examples where government does better because there is no reasonable alternative. Where there is an alternative, I think we would almost always be better off with private enterprise doing it (I think that for no good reason other than the fact that I've never really dealt with a government agency after which I thought, "Wow! What a great experience THAT was!").