John Tamny--Let the Government Eat Cake! #3897

We all know that the government wastes tremendous sums of money on useless programs that do no good whatsoever. But the real crime according to John and the Austrian School of Economics is the lost opportunity cost of the misspent money to society. Every dollar spent by government is one dollar that cannot be profitably invested in the private economy. This isn't a new problem. George Washington bemoaned the fact that government always got ripped off by military vendors. The more things change... But where would we be if government spending were just half of what it is today? By some estimates our economy would be nearly triple its size if we had skipped Johnson's Great Society programs.