Journalists talk endlessly these days about the need for more consumer spending to revive the economy, and for government programs to juice consumer spending. Economist Steven Horwitz takes on the assumption that spending is the key to economic activity:

One of the most pernicious and widespread economic fallacies is the belief that consumption is the key to a healthy economy.  We hear this idea all the time in the popular press and casual conversation, particularly during economic downturns.  People say things like, “Well, if folks would just start buying things again, the economy would pick up” or “If we could only get more money in the hands of consumers, we’d get out of this recession.”  This belief in the power of consumption is also what has guided much of economic policy in the last couple of years, with its endless stream of stimulus packages.

This belief is an inheritance of misguided Keynesian thinking. Production, not consumption, is the source of wealth.  If we want a healthy economy, we need to create the conditions under which producers can get on with the process of creating wealth for others to consume, and under which households and firms can engage in thesaving necessary to finance that production….

Putting more resources in the hands of consumers through a government stimulus package fails precisely because the wealth so transferred ultimately has to come from producers.  This is obvious when the spending is financed by taxation, but it’s equally true for deficit spending and inflation.  With deficit spending the wealth comes from producers’ purchases of government bonds.  With inflation it comes proportionately from holders of dollars (obtained through acts of production) whose purchasing power is weakened by the excess supply of money.  In neither case does government create wealth. Nor does consumption.  The new ability to consume still originates in prior acts of production.  If we want real stimulus, we need to free up producers by creating a more hospitable environment for production and not penalize the saving that finances them.

The ‘Consumer Spending’ Myth is a post from Cato @ Liberty - Cato Institute Blog

President Obama delivered a commencement speech at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor on Saturday.

He called on all Americans “to maintain a basic level of civility in our public debate.”  Who could argue? Yet the president apparently believes that civility means protecting his policies from valid criticism.

He instructed graduates that “the practice of listening to opposing views is essential for effective citizenship.”  Right again.  But the civics lesson rings hollow coming from a president who falsely claimed there was “no disagreement” over his massive “stimulus” bill, and that opponents of his health care takeover offered no proposals of their own.

He explained, “what we should be asking is not whether we need ‘big government’ or a ‘small government,’ but how we can create a smarter and better government.”  Which is pretty much what every politician says when he wants big government and voters want small government.

Most troubling was this: “What troubles me is when I hear people say that all of government is inherently bad.”  That remark reminded me of this passage from Thomas Paine’s Common Sense: “Government, even in its best state, is but a necessary evil.” And it has me thinking that our president, a former constitutional law professor, who just received an honorary Doctor of Laws degree from the University of Michigan, really doesn’t get the American idea of government. At all.

Obama vs. Common Sense is a post from Cato @ Liberty - Cato Institute Blog

Tim Carney has a blog post at the Examiner that’s worth quoting in full:

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce has issued its 2009 congressional scorecard, and once again, Rep. Ron Paul, R-Tex. — certainly one of the two most free-market politicians in Washington — gets the lowest score of any Republican.

Paul was one of a handful of GOP lawmakers not to win the Chamber’s “Spirit of Enterprise Award.” He scored only a 67%, bucking the Chamber on five votes, including:

• Paul opposed the “Solar Technology Roadmap Act,” which boosted subsidies for unprofitable solar energy technology.
• Paul opposed the “Travel Promotion Act,” which subsidizes the tourism industry with a new fee on international visitors.
• Paul opposed the largest spending bill in history, Obama’s $787 billion stimulus bill.

(Rep John Duncan, R-Tenn., tied Ron Paul with 67%. John McHugh, R-N.Y., scored a 40%, but he missed most of the year because he went off to the Obama administration.)

I wrote about this phenomenon last year, when the divergence was even greater between the Chamber’s agenda and the free-market agenda:

Similarly, Texas libertarian GOPer Rep. Ron Paul—the most steadfast congressional opponent of regulation, taxation, and any sort of government intervention in business—scored lower than 90% of Democrats last year on the Chamber’s scorecard.

Sen. Jim DeMint, R-S.C., had the most conservative voting record in 2008 according to the American Conservative Union (ACU), and was a “taxpayer hero” according to the National Taxpayer’s Union (NTU), but the U.S. Chamber of Commerce says his 2008 record was less pro-business than Barack Obama, Joe Biden, and Hillary Clinton.
This year’s picture was less glaring, but it’s still more evidence that “pro-business” is not the same as “pro-freedom.” The U.S. Chamber is the former. Ron Paul, and the libertarian position, is the latter.

I suspect that on issues such as free trade agreements and immigration reform, I might be closer to the Chamber’s position than to Ron Paul’s. But to suggest that Paul is wrong to vote against business subsidies — or that DeMint was wrong to vote against Bush’s 2008 stimulus package and the $700 billion TARP bailout – certainly does illustrate how much difference there can be between “pro-business” and “pro-market.” Instead of “Spirit of Enterprise,” the Chamber should call these the “Spirit of Subsidy Awards.”

Ron Paul, the Chamber of Commerce, and Economic Freedom is a post from Cato @ Liberty - Cato Institute Blog

Tony Blankley, former press secretary to Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich, exults in the Washington Times that Americans are waking up “to our heritage of freedom” and to the abuse of the Constitution:

All the following acts have suddenly awakened Americans to their Constitution: (1) The nationalization of car companies and banks; (2) the subordination of the car companies’ legal bondholders to union bosses; (3) the creation of trillion-dollar slush funds (the stimulus package) used for, among other purposes, the corrupt purchase of congressional votes; (4) the mandating of individual health insurance purchase against the will of Americans; (5) the attempt to have Obamacare “deemed” to have been enacted, rather than actually publicly voted on by Congress.

Amazingly, spontaneously, Americans are educating themselves about the details of our Constitution.

He’s absolutely right. All those actions do raise serious questions about whether there are still any constitutional limitations on government, which is to say, whether the Constitution is still in effect, questions that Roger Pilon also raised this week in the Christian Science Monitor. But it would be even better if Americans had noticed the threats to constitutional government a bit earlier, if not during the New Deal or the Great Society, then perhaps during the past decade when, as Gene Healy and Tim Lynch wrote in 2006:

Unfortunately, far from defending the Constitution, President Bush has repeatedly sought to strip out the limits the document places on federal power. In its official legal briefs and public actions, the Bush administration has advanced a view of federal power that is astonishingly broad, a view that includes

• a federal government empowered to regulate core political speech—and restrict it greatly when it counts the most: in the days before a federal election;
• a president who cannot be restrained, through validly enacted statutes, from pursuing any tactic he believes to be effective in the war on terror;
• a president who has the inherent constitutional authority to designate American citizens suspected of terrorist activity as “enemy combatants,” strip them of any constitutional protection, and lock them up without charges for the duration of the war on terror— in other words, perhaps forever; and
• a federal government with the power to supervise virtually every aspect of American life, from kindergarten, to marriage, to the grave.

President Bush’s constitutional vision is, in short, sharply at odds with the text, history, and structure of our Constitution, which authorizes a government of limited powers.

But better late than never, and we join Tony Blankley in hoping that the Constitution’s limits on the powers of the federal government will once again be an issue in American politics and governance.

Waking Up at Last is a post from Cato @ Liberty - Cato Institute Blog

Exactly two years ago, George W. Bush released his final budget. Here’s what the Washington Post had to say:

[T]he president’s budget envisions a big jump in the budget deficit, from $163 billion in 2007 to about $400 billion in 2008 and 2009. Much of that increase will be the result of a slowing economy and a stimulus package expected to cost about $150 billion.

Today’s release of President Obama’s FY 2011 budget shows that those deficit prognostications were way off:

Instead of a “big jump” to $400 billion in 2009, the actual deficit turned about to be a trillion dollars higher. Bush deserves most of the blame for that deficit, but the 2010 and 2011 deficits will be on Obama.

The frightening prospect is that, like Bush, Obama’s future budget projections will also turn out to be low-balled. Whether it has been war, natural disasters, or a recession, Bush and Obama have both responded to any “crisis” by spending gobs of money. Given that even Obama is projecting annual deficits still in the trillion dollar range by 2020, taxpayers had better hope the Taliban, Mother Nature, and the economy start cooperating.

Deficit Prognostications is a post from Cato @ Liberty - Cato Institute Blog

In his Brookings Institution speech yesterday, President Obama called for more Keynesian-style spending stimulus for the economy, including increased investment on government projects and expanded subsidy payments to the unemployed and state governments. The package might cost $150 billion or more.

The president said that we’ve had to “spend our way out of this recession.” We’ve certainly had massive spending, but it doesn’t seem to have helped the economy, as the 10 percent unemployment rate attests to.

It’s not just that the Obama “stimulus” package from February has apparently failed. The total Keynesian stimulus is not measured by the spending in that bill only, but by the total size of federal government deficits.

The chart shows that while the federal deficit (the total ”stimulus” amount) has skyrocketed over the last three years, the unemployment rate has more than doubled. (The unemployment rate is the fiscal year average. Two months are included for FY2010.)

The total Keynesian stimulus of recent years has included the Bush stimulus bill in early 2008, TARP, large increases in regular appropriations, soaring entitlement spending, the Obama stimulus package from February, rising unemployment benefits, and falling revenues, which are “automatic stabilizers” according to Keynesian theory.

The deficit-fueled Keynesian approach to recovery is not working. The time is long overdue for the Democrats in Congress and advisers in the White House to reconsider their Keynesian beliefs and to start entertaining some market-oriented policies to get the economy moving again.

Is Keynesian Stimulus Working? is a post from Cato @ Liberty - Cato Institute Blog

According to The Hill, in a conference call yesterday with the nation’s governors, Vice President Joe Biden said that “In my wildest dreams, I never thought it would work this well.”  The “it” would be the administration’s $787 billion so-called “stimulus” package.

At the same time, USA Today reported:

Nearly $10 billion in stimulus aid to repair the nation’s tattered highways has largely bypassed dozens of metropolitan areas where roads are in the worst shape, a USA TODAY analysis shows… The problem is a byproduct of a stimulus package designed to spend as fast as possible to revive the economy. Many roads are in such bad shape that repairs would take too long and cost too much to qualify for funds, says John Barton, head of engineering for Texas’ Department of Transportation. The result is that counties with the worst roads won’t get much more repair money than counties with better roads. The 74 counties with half of the nation’s bad roads will split $1.9 billion, records show; counties with no major roads in bad shape will split about $1.5 billion.

A few weeks ago I was driving on I-70 somewhere around Washington, PA and got stuck in a traffic jam over what appeared to be a small bridge maintenance job.  A sign, also funded by taxpayers, proudly declared that the maintenance was made possible by the “stimulus” legislation.  What irritated me more than the traffic jam was the fact that the stretch of I-70 I was on is a notoriously white-knuckle ride.  The pavement is old and the two lanes are squished between cement dividers, leaving little room for error.  A reasonable person might conclude that fixing I-70 would be a priority.  But reasonable and Congress go together like wolves and sheep.  To me it was further evidence of the inefficient, politicized nature of federal infrastructure spending.  (It also brought to mind former pork-barrel congressman Bud Shuster’s lightly traveled I-99 in central PA.)

In a different article USA Today also reported:

The $787 billion economic recovery package also is stimulating growth in the federal government as agencies hire thousands of workers and spend millions of dollars to oversee and implement the package, according to government records and spokesmen… That’s helped fuel the continued growth of the federal government, which increased by more than 25,000 employees, or 1.3%, since December 2008, according to the latest quarterly report. During that time, the ranks of the nation’s unemployed increased by nearly 4 million, Labor Department statistics show.

Apparently for VP Biden, “stimulus” success means inefficient infrastructure spending and more federal employees.

Keep Dreaming, Mr. Vice President is a post from Cato @ Liberty - Cato Institute Blog

The Obama administration has been touting its wasteful “stimulus” package as the answer to the recession.  Now that Uncle Sam has started his spending binge, John Cogan, John Taylor, and Volker Wieland assess the result.  Their conclusion:  for all of the money spent, the effort wasn’t much of a stimulus.

They write in the Wall Street Journal:

Direct evidence of an impact by government spending can be found in 1.8 of the 5.4 percentage-point improvement from the first to second quarter of this year. However, more than half of this contribution was due to defense spending that was not part of the stimulus package. Of the entire $787 billion stimulus package, only $4.5 billion went to federal purchases and $17.7 billion to state and local purchases in the second quarter. The growth improvement in the second quarter must have been largely due to factors other than the stimulus package.

Incoming data will reveal more in coming months, but the data available so far tell us that the government transfers and rebates have not stimulated consumption at all, and that the resilience of the private sector following the fall 2008 panic not the fiscal stimulus program deserves the lion’s share of the credit for the impressive growth improvement from the first to the second quarter. As the economic recovery takes hold, it is important to continue assessing the role played by the stimulus package and other factors. These assessments can be a valuable guide to future policy makers in designing effective policy responses to economic downturns.

If policymakers really want to stimulate the economy, they will stop prodigiously wasting money, unfairly redistributing people’s earnings, making the tax system ever more complex, and imposing job-killing regulations.  In other words, politicians will stop being politicians.

When Stimulus Is No Stimulus is a post from Cato @ Liberty - Cato Institute Blog

Obama Considering Another Round of Stimulus

With unemployment continuing to climb and the economy struggling along, some lawmakers and pundits are raising the possibility of a second stimulus package at some point in the future. The Cato Institute was strongly opposed to the $787 billion package passed earlier this year, and would oppose additional stimulus packages on the same grounds.

“Once government expands beyond the level of providing core public goods such as the rule of law, there tends to be an inverse relationship between the size of government and economic growth,” argues Cato scholar Daniel J. Mitchell. “Doing more of a bad thing is not a recipe for growth.”

Mitchell narrated a video in January that punctures the myth that bigger government “stimulates” the economy. In short, the stimulus, and all big-spending programs are good for government, but will have negative effects on the economy.

Writing in Forbes, Cato scholar Alan Reynolds weighs in on the failures of stimulus packages at home and abroad:

In reality, the so-called stimulus package was actually just a deferred tax increase of $787 billion plus interest.

Whether we are talking about India, Japan or the U.S., all such unaffordable spending packages have repeatedly been shown to be effective only in severely depressing the value of stocks and bonds (private wealth). To call that result a “stimulus” is semantic double talk, and would be merely silly were it not so dangerous.

In case you’re keeping score, Cato scholars have opposed government spending to boost the economy without regard to the party in power.

For more of Cato’s research on government spending, visit Cato.org/FiscalReality.

Sarah Palin Resigns as Governor of Alaska

Alaska Governor Sarah Palin resigned from office last week with 18 months left in her term, setting off weeklong speculation by pundits.

Cato Vice President Gene Healy comments:

Palin’s future remains uncertain, but it’s hard to see how her cryptic and poorly drafted resignation speech positions her for a presidential run. Nonetheless, her departure presents a good opportunity to reflect on the Right’s affinity for presidential contenders who – how to put this? – don’t exactly overwhelm you with their intellectual depth.

It’s one thing to reject liberal elitism. It’s another thing to become so consumed with annoying liberals that you cleave to anyone they mock, and make presidential virtues out of shallow policy knowledge and lack of intellectual curiosity.

Writing at Politico, Cato scholars David Boaz and Roger Pilon weigh in on what her resignation means for the former Vice-Presidential candidate’s political future:

Boaz:

Will we one day say that her presidency was ‘born on the Fourth of July’? I doubt it. This appears to be just the latest evidence that Sarah Palin is not ready for prime time. The day McCain chose her, I compared her unfavorably to Mark Sanford. Despite everything, I’d still stand by that analysis. At the time I noted that devout conservative Ramesh Ponnuru said ‘Palin has been governor for about two minutes.’ Now it’s three minutes.

Running for president after a single term as governor is a gamble. Running after quitting in the middle of your first term is something else again. If this is indeed a political move to clear the decks for a national campaign, then she needs adult supervision soon. But I can’t really believe that’s what’s going on here. I suspect we’re going to hear soon about a yet-unknown scandal that was about to make continuing in office untenable.

Pilon:

It seems that since her return to the state following the campaign, activist opponents and bloggers have bombarded the governor’s office with endless document requests. And she’s faced 16 ethics inquiries, with no end in sight. All but one have since been resolved, but the politics of personal destruction has cost the state millions, as Palin noted. Add to that the unrelenting, often vicious and gratuitous attacks on her and even on her family, and it’s no wonder that she would say ‘Enough.’ It has nothing to do with ‘quitting’ or with being ‘unable to take the heat.’ It has everything to do with stepping back and saying you’re not willing to put your family and your state through any more. She seems confident that history will judge her more thoughtless critics for what they are. I hope she’s right.

Honduras’ President Is Removed from Office

In reaction to Honduran President Manuel Zelaya’s attempt to stay in power despite term limits set by the nation’s Constitution, armed forces removed him, sending the Latin American nation into political turmoil.

Juan Carlos Hidalgo, an expert on Latin American affairs, comments:

The removal from office of Zelaya on Sunday by the armed forces is the result of his continuous attempts to promote a referendum that would allow for his reelection, a move that had been declared illegal by the Supreme Court and the Electoral Tribunal and condemned by the Honduran Congress and the attorney general. Unfortunately, the Honduran constitution does not provide an effective civilian mechanism for removing a president from office after repeated violations of the law, such as impeachment in the U.S. Constitution. Nonetheless, the armed forces acted under the order of the country’s Supreme Court, and the presidency has been promptly bestowed on the civilian figure — the president of Congress — specified by the constitution.

To be sure, Hidalgo writes, the military action in Honduras was not a coup:

What happened in Honduras on June 28 was not a military coup. It was the constitutional removal of a president who abused his powers and tried to subvert the country’s democratic institutions in order to stay in office.

The extent to which this episode has been misreported is truly remarkable.

Week in Review: Stimulus, Sarah Palin and a Political Conflict in Honduras is a post from Cato @ Liberty - Cato Institute Blog

Back in April there was a lot of debate about how many people actually attended the April 15 “tea parties” to oppose President Obama’s tax and spending programs. Pajamas Media, an enthusiastic backer of the protests, offered an estimate upwards of 400,000.

Nate Silver of the FiveThirtyEight blog, a more skeptical observer, diligently compiled what he considered “nonpartisan and credible” estimates — mostly from mainstream media or police sources — and came up with a detailed sum of about 311,000. Not bad for widely dispersed events, most with no big-name speakers or celebrities, not hyped by the major media (though certainly hyped by some of the conservative media).

But I’ve recently stumbled across reports of two tea parties that didn’t make Silver’s list. In a long profile of a councilwoman who supported Obama in Greenwood, South Carolina, the Washington Post reports on her encountering 200 people at a tea party in Greenwood. And the latest compilation of newspaper clippings from the Mackinac Center includes an April 16 article from the Midland (Michigan) Daily News about a tea party there that attracted 500 people. So who knows how many other farflung events didn’t get included in Silver’s comprehensive list?

Andrew Samwick of Dartmouth complained that the tea parties — and maybe even libertarians — weren’t clearly focused on the problem of spending. As I said in a comment there, I think that’s an unfair charge:

Here’s how one major news outlet reported them:

Nationwide ‘tea party’ protests blast spending – CNN.com (http://www.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/04/15/tea.parties/ )
ABCNews.com said “Anti-Tax ‘Tea Parties’ Protest President Obama’s Tax and Spending Policies.” USA Today wrote, “What started out as a handful of people blogging about their anger over federal spending — the bailouts, the $787 billion stimulus package and Obama’s budget — has grown into scores of so-called tea parties across the country.”

It’s hard to put specific cuts, especially COLAs and the like, on protest signs; but I think it’s fair to say that the tea-party crowds were complaining about excessive spending and “generational theft.”

How Many Attended the Tea Parties? is a post from Cato @ Liberty - Cato Institute Blog

The president may believe that he’s created thousands (or is that millions?) of jobs, but the public doesn’t believe him.  In fact, according to Rasmussen Reports, a plurality of the public wants to drop the rest of the “stimulus” spending while keeping the tax cuts:

Forty-five percent (45%) of Americans say the rest of the new government spending authorized in the $787-billion economic stimulus plan should now be canceled. A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey found that just 36% disagree and 20% are not sure.

…

Just 20% of adults say the tax cuts included in the stimulus plan should be canceled while 55% disagree. The stimulus plan includes $288 billion in tax cuts.

While there is a wide partisan gap on the question of stimulus spending, there is little partisan disagreement on maintaining the tax cuts.

President Obama on Monday vowed to speed up the pace of stimulus spending and said the money will help “create or save” 600,000 more jobs this summer.

However, only 31% of Americans believe the new government spending in the stimulus package creates new jobs. Forty-eight percent (48%) say the stimulus spending does not create jobs, and 21% are not sure.

This is certainly a better approach for growing the economy.  The people are proving to be a lot smarter than their governors in Washington.

Public Tires of Wasteful “Stimulus” Spending is a post from Cato @ Liberty - Cato Institute Blog

USA Today investigates how members of Congress are “working behind the scenes to try to influence how the [stimulus]  money is spent.”

Congress and President Obama proudly noted that there were no earmarks in the $787 stimulus bill. But…

Ten of 27 departments and agencies receiving stimulus money have released records of contacts by lawmakers under Freedom of Information Act requests USA TODAY filed in April. Those records detailed 53 letters, phone calls and e-mails recommending projects from 60 members from February through the end of May. Thirteen of those lawmakers voted against the stimulus package.

Critics of the stimulus bill pointed out that government money is always politically directed. It’s little consolation to be proven right.

The Politics of Stimulus Spending is a post from Cato @ Liberty - Cato Institute Blog

It has long been recognized that many capitalists are the greatest enemies of capitalism.  They want free enterprise for others, not themselves.

Unfortunately, organized labor tends to be even more statist in orientation.  Unions now routinely lobby for government to give them what they cannot get in the marketplace.

Labor influence is greatest in the public sector.  And as government’s power has expanded during the current economic crisis, so has the influence of unions.  Observes Steve Malanga in the Wall Street Journal:

Across the private sector, workers are swallowing hard as their employers freeze salaries, cancel bonuses, and institute longer work days. America’s employees can see for themselves how steeply business has fallen off, which is why many are accepting cost-saving measures with equanimity — especially compared to workers in France, where riots and plant takeovers have become regular news.

But then there is the U.S. public sector, where the mood seems very European these days. In New Jersey, which faces a $3.3 billion budget deficit, angry state workers have demonstrated in Trenton and taken Gov. Jon Corzine to court over his plan to require unpaid furloughs for public employees. In New York, public-sector unions have hit the airwaves with caustic ads denouncing Gov. David Paterson’s promise to lay off state workers if they continue refusing to forgo wage hikes as part of an effort to close a $17.7 billion deficit. In Los Angeles County, where the schools face a budget deficit of nearly $600 million, school employees have balked at a salary freeze and vowed to oppose any layoffs that the board of education says it will have to pursue if workers don’t agree to concessions.

Call it a tale of two economies. Private-sector workers — unionized and nonunion alike — can largely see that without compromises they may be forced to join unemployment lines. Not so in the public sector.

Government unions used their influence this winter in Washington to ensure that a healthy chunk of the federal stimulus package was sent to states and cities to preserve public jobs. Now they are fighting tenacious and largely successful local battles to safeguard salaries and benefits. Their gains, of course, can only come at the expense of taxpayers, which is one reason why states and cities are approving tens of billions of dollars in tax increases.

The government’s increased power over the economy also gives organized labor a new hook to lobby for more special interest privileges.  For instance, the AFL-CIO is arguing that the federal bailout of the auto industry should bar the companies from moving factories overseas.

Explains the union federation:

The pundits and politicians inside the Washington Beltway don’t get: If the United States continues to send its manufacturing jobs [1] overseas—as [2] General Motors and Chrysler are now proposing—the result will be more low-income U.S. families.

So today, workers, economists, academics and business and union leaders, fresh from the “[3] Keep It Made in America” bus tour through the nation’s heartland, brought that message to the policymakers’ doorstep as part of a teach-in on Capitol Hill.

The 11-day, 34-city bus tour showcased the ripple effect on communities of the lost jobs in manufacturing. ([4] See video.) Today, during the teach-in, those who took part brought the stories they heard along the tour and presented principles for revitalizing the auto industry to members of Congress and the press. 

Labor officials have been making similar arguments about bank lending.  If you got bailed out by Washington, then you have an obligation to keep funding bankrupt concerns.  Never mind getting paid back, and paying back the taxpayers.

Markets are resilient, but can survive only so much political interference.  If the American people aren’t careful, they might eventually find themselves living in an economy more appropriate for Latin America than North America.

Labor’s Waxing Political Influence is a post from Cato @ Liberty - Cato Institute Blog

Billions and billions of dollars! Get yours today!

I’ve written before about the massive lobbying game in Washington to get your own special interests written into the stimulus and budget bills. And about the efforts to pressure governments into spending that money NOW.

Today a friend sent me a new piece of the incredible expanding stimulus economy. A publishing company has created a new newsletter on how to keep up with “ever-changing opportunities and the complex requirements to apply for them” — The Money for Main Street Monitor. Yes, for only $229 a year, with this special offer, you can keep up with the lucrative and ever-changing “new stimulus funding opportunities.”

I’m omitting the specifics so as not to give this parasitical industry any more publicity, but here’s the text of the email advertisement:

Dear Nonprofit Professional,

Billions of dollars from the Obama stimulus plan are becoming available daily for funding thousands of new state, local and nonprofit programs!

And while it’s extremely time consuming and difficult to keep up with the ever-changing opportunities and the complex requirements to apply for them, we can help make that task easier than you’d imagine.

That’s why [the company] is proud to introduce our newest and much-needed online service: The Money for Main Street Monitor.

Just click on or cut and paste the following link into your Web browser to take advantage of a special one-week offer on this continuously updated service:

…

Continuous Stimulus Funding Updates

While we have diligently kept our readers up to date on the billions of dollars in funding coming from the Obama stimulus package, many tell us they need much more coverage!

Consequently, we have assigned a team of experienced Washington, DC-based editors to focus exclusively on new stimulus funding opportunities for health care, family services, education, mental health, disabilities and substance abuse programs, housing and community development!<

Through continuously updated articles, subscribers to this new online service will be kept up to date on the latest funding opportunities as soon as they emerge. And with our online format, subscribers will have access to our user-friendly search tools to instantly find the funding opportunities most suited for their organizations!

Plus, our updates — unlike those on government Web sites — are in plain English and easy to find.  And, we’ve included a wealth of grant-writing tips designed to help your organization get its share of stimulus funding!

We know how important it is for every organization to watch their dollars closely these days, and we’re doing are best to help. That’s why we are offering you a specially reduced rate for this much-needed publication, The Money for Main Street Monitor.

Just click on or cut and paste the following link into your Web browser to find out more about this special one-week offer:

…

Or you can call in your order toll free at 1-800-[GET OTHER PEOPLE'S MONEY].

This isn’t the only company making such offers. Lobbyists, consultants, newsletter publishers, and others will be making money this year guiding their clients to the pot of gold at the end of the stimulus. But in economic terms, all this effort is deadweight loss. Instead of devoting time and talent and resources to the production of real economic value, these people are being lured into the parasite economy, jockeying for money extracted from productive workers and businesses and redistributed by a Washington bureaucracy and the lobbyists that revolve around it.

The Stimulus Feeding Frenzy is a post from Cato @ Liberty - Cato Institute Blog