It should tell us something when even Communist China’s leaders are admitting that government “stimulus” spending is harmful.
The normally heavily controlled Chinese media have come up with a saying about their country’s failed stimulus policies. Translated, it means, “The state advances, society retreats.”
Pumping lots of tax dollars into government has expanded government but harmed the more efficient privately owned companies that have been gaining a foothold in that country.
“Beijing’s stimulus spending fed an expansion of state industry while private companies shrank or struggled amid plunging global demand …,” The Associated Press reported. That’s a huge problem, the AP added, because “Private companies generate the bulk of China’s new jobs and wealth, and analysts warned that concentrating so much money on less dynamic state-owned companies might lead to economic problems later.”
So Communist Chinese officials are now promising to expand free-enterprise opportunities to fight that trend.
Isn’t it troubling that so-called “stimulus” spending is doing so much harm, both in the United States and abroad, yet we continue to spend stimulus dollars to prop up government jobs as private-sector employment crumbles?
Wouldn’t it be wiser for us to pull back the unspent dollars remaining from our own $862 billion “stimulus” and to reduce the federal borrowing and spending that are crippling our economy?