Fall of the Dutch

[kandrathe]

Correct, but this is one of the great mysteries of politics.

With government, whatever you do, you need to work to undo someday. They never tend to make temporary changes. So this is why the tension exists between those that want government smaller, and those that want government larger. The "right wing" feel that they face huge obstacles in trimming back once things are established in law. The rhetoric from the "left wing" always becomes one of damaging the lives of pensioners, or young people (like Crusader). And, yes, certainly it is the change in removing a giveaway that is most painful. The rhetoric from the right wing is always about deficits, debts, fraud and wasted spending. And, yes, it is always the case that it is only a small minority of funds that are squandered (although, with a Trillion dollar budget the small % misappropriated would feed and clothe all of our poor for a year).

In the US... I am for as small a government as is possible (in programs), since this is a limitation on the power of the majority against the minorities (laws, enforcement and courts defend them). I don't presume to understand the inner workings of other countries enough, or their peoples will to advocate otherwise. I would also desire to see the US scale back their military might to what is needed to defend the US (and to make good on promises made to defend others until those others can defend themselves).

That said; As Jester has pointed out, I do see a role for a national government to "invest" at those times when people and businesses see high risk in spending money. For example, if you have a vital roadway that is typically congested for hours every day, spending the money to create more lanes or fix broken pavement will improve the traffic flow increasing the productivity of that urban area. Or, another way to boost the local economy would be to give businesses an assurance of lower costs (at least until the economy were growing steadily again).

The root causes of this current economic problem was malinvestment in housing, where due to unfavorable investing opportunities most everywhere else, the government subsidized (risk ameliorated) housing market seemed a stable and profitable investment. We found the level where even the very large US government couldn't underwrite the risk in an economic downturn.