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From: mwm@ea.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.politics
Subject: Re: The WSJ on Reaganomics
Message-ID: <22400054@ea.UUCP>
Date: Sat, 1-Dec-84 22:20:00 EST
Article-I.D.: ea.22400054
Posted: Sat Dec  1 22:20:00 1984
Date-Received: Tue, 4-Dec-84 09:06:50 EST
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Nf-From: ea!mwm    Dec  1 21:20:00 1984

/***** ea:net.politics / dciem!mmt / 11:38 am  Nov 27, 1984 */
> That's something of a non-sequitur, isn't it?  I don't see how you can
> go from the incentive-nulling effects of a 95+% tax rate to the notion
> that Government spending is a net cost on the economy.  The two ideas
> are totally unrelated.

Oops, you're right. It isn't a cost. However, the government spending in
question (transfer payments) causes the incentive nulling, which means that
there is less produce in the economy later.

> Do you really believe that only *producers* contribute to the economy?
> Why does the private sector then include so many people in advertising,
> management, entertainment (very highly paid, too), restaurants, etc. etc.

Lets see, if somebody doesn't produce, then they can't be adding wealth to
the economy, so yeah, I do believe that only producers contribute to the
economy. Entertainment *is* wealth, so entertainers are productive.
Similarly for restaurants. I can't explain advertisers :-).

> Why do you pick on the civil service as the only anti-productive group
> of paid workers?  I think that the reason has to be religious, because
> it sure isn't based in logic.

I was picking on civil servants because that was the topic under
discussion.  Any large bureaucracy has such parasites. Civil servants are
particularly vile because they are paid money that was taken from others at
gunpoint, and generally can't be fired. Besides which, there are a *lot* of
them.