Government Waste or Smart Investment: You Decide

(The following is written and submitted for publication on LeftWingCapitalist by Guy Heston.)

My friends on the right often argue that liberals such as myself are hopelessly misguided taxers and spenders who will brazenly throw around public money like a drunken sailor. For examples of this argument, please see the Howard Jarvis TaxpayersAssociation website (http://hjta.org/) on which so many postings seem to rant and rave apoplectically about needless expenses from the public purse and overall government waste.

I suggest that in our eagerness to get all lathered up about waste we often don’t recognize the difference between an expense and an investment, and here are a couple of examples.

Let’s start with the Internal Revenue Service (IRS),

Jobs: Getting and Keeping One -- Advice from One Boss

You looking for a job?  Or know someone who is, and you want to help?  Then read on.

(Potential employers are welcome to read this, too.)

America seems to be stuck with an unemployment rate of 9% or more.  But most people do not realize that even with so much unemployment there are still millions of job openings that are going unfilled.  Apparently, one of the big reasons that companies are not able to fill these openings is because they are not able to find enough qualified candidates.  Bloomberg Businessweek magazine has a current article profiling this situation; click here to read it.


When a business is hiring, the manager or owner usually wants to hire as quickly as possible, and hire somebody with the best possible qualifications to be successful in the new employment. Also, it is usually to the employer's advantage to choose an employee who will remain in that position for an extended period of time.  Most job seekers probably want to find a job sooner rather than later, and stick with it as long as possible.

So far, so good.

Add education and educators to help the nation's economy

"The inherent vice of Capitalism is the unequal sharing of blessings; the inherent vice of Socialism is the equal sharing of miseries."  So said Winston Churchill, according to a book in my library.  Maybe so; in any case, it's pithy.

The June 2011 issue of Smithsonian magazine contains a great article on some folks in the Columbia River Gorge area who are in the business of developing and producing aerial drones; this is a story about entrepreneurial small business, and it's a good one, currently available at http://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/Drones-are-Ready-for-Takeoff.html.

Stick with me; there's a connection here.  By the time you reach the end, you might even agree with my case for increasing public funding for education!

Warning signs

Let me be clear about this: Today's DC political events continue to be a diversion from the really important actions that must be done. This is hurting the country.

Ultimately, and despite whatever Congress decides to do on the budget and the debt ceiling, there is no hope for long-term reduction of the Federal debt without economic growth.

You saw my comments yesterday about our nation's economic growth. And perhaps you saw or heard this morning's GDP reports convey this message: The recent recession was worse than we thought it was, and the recovery from that recession--especially in the first half of this year--has been weaker than expected, and weaker than prior reports had indicated.