My own version of the title’s maxim invoked “zero-sum economics, or parasite vs. host. The larger the parasitical sector gets, the weaker the productive host will grow. The first is sucking the lifeblood of the second.”
Peter Schiff expertly drives home the principle in his latest column:
“The fiscal 2011 budget proposed by President Obama contains $3.8 trillion in federal spending. Think of government as a cancer feeding off the private sector. The larger it grows, the more jobs it kills. Unfortunately, most politicians follow the misguided advice of economist John Maynard Keynes, who advocated government spending as a means of job creation. In reality, government spending merely results in government jobs replacing more efficient private sector jobs.”
Read on about the effects of regulation, subsidies and, yes, tax cuts when borrowing continues apace. As they bay for the tax-cuts panacea, I bet beautiful Sarah and her supporters have not figured out that:
“… a dollar borrowed kills more jobs than a dollar taxed. Therefore, cutting taxes and borrowing the shortfall kills more jobs then [sic] it creates. This is true because jobs require capital and government borrowing more directly crowds out private capital investment than taxes do.”
Bush, I noted in “Deficit Disorders,” cut taxes while “spending like there was no tomorrow—for every dollar that may or may not remain with its rightful owner, the president blew tens of non-existent bucks on brand-new spending.” And, “Each of the morally bankrupt parties has used tax cuts as a decoy to avoid addressing the cause of the deficit: government’s spending more than it steals.”