Federal Aid To States
Wednesday, January 15th, 2003A down economy always catalyzes calls for increased government spending on all manner of “relief” programs. It has long been a mystery to me where people get the idea that money spent by government appears magically from the wellspring of good intentions – that resources used by government are not extracted from use elsewhere but are “free” and therefore painless. I suppose it comes from the fantasy that it is always possible to arrange for “someone else” to pay for those resources – that “I” (and everyone else) can assign the pain to “you” and take the benefit for myself. How to make that selfish arrangement seems to be a primary topic of debate in modern political discourse.