The false economy of government “stimulus”

In its ongoing attempts to “stimulate” the economy, the government takes money out of the economy (in the form of cash through taxes or credit through deficits), consumes part of it in waste and administration, and then spends some part of it for a stadium, a bridge or whatever.

All the government can do, at best, is to move some jobs from that portion of the economy where the private sector would have used the money to that portion of the economy for which the politicians can take credit in hopes of reelection. Nevertheless, due to the manifest inefficiencies in government, more jobs would have been created in the private economy had the money not been unceremoniously extracted from the taxpayers' wallets in the first place.

Hence, while the politicians get to take credit for some job creation, the net number of jobs created will always be less than had the private sector been left with the money and regulation reduced.