bjw said..FormulaNova said..Mobydisc said..
If you look at any big business you will see the effects of big government. Big businesses can't exist without with big government.
What does that actually mean?
A good example is the wastage of public money in big government spending. Sometimes it can work, but look at the Belt and Road, or Covid Printing money.
Or the recent spend on manufacturing of Solar Panels in Australia. Since it didn't work in Germany or even the leader in China bankrupted.
Big government spends so often are misguided.
That doesn't address what I was asking. I was wondering why Mobydisc seems to think that big businesses can't exist without big government. What does that mean? ... and why?
I think sometimes people get caught up in thinking that public services are a waste of money. This is usually called out before an election by someone wanting to try and focus on the other guys and their obvious waste of money.
When is the last time you really witnessed wastage in hospitals or with the police? Sure, someone will give an anectode about that time they walked into a hospital and there were fifteen thousand nurses standing around but they didn't get attention immediately, but is this really wastage?
Similarly, a lot of jobs are done in government that need people to do them. You will only notice these roles when they disappear and you wonder why there is no one to do what you expected them to.
If we ran government as 'efficiently' as some people think, we would get very poor service for our money.
It still bugs me many years later that seemingly the same people that were blaming the government for 'too much red tape' then complained about lack of oversight when people died as a result of businesses with poor approaches to safety when installing insulation.
When is it 'red tape' and when is it 'good oversight'?
'Covid Printing money'.... what does that mean?
I will make an assumption that you are talking about the government stimulating the economy during Covid. This is a good thing, but can come with a headache afterwards. In Covid, people lost jobs, people were scared, people weren't sure what was going to happen. By encouraging people to spend in the economy, it actually pulls people out of what would otherwise be a recession. I think we were already in one or close to one before Covid and in some ways Covid helped us.
But the downside of stimulating the economy is inflation, and then you have to reign that in.
God help us when we next get a government that decides on 'austerity' when facing down the barrel of a recession. A good government spends enough to keep things ticking over. A bad one thinks keeping money locked up somehow helps the economy. It doesn't; it just stops it.
