I encourage government spending within our borders because it all comes back around.

Here we throw $300 million to "defeat despair". Seems a worthy adversary, and the money trickles down.

https://www.politico.com/news/2020/0...navirus-421957

I'm surprised they didn't go with Randy Quaid instead of Dennis.

Of course it comes back around. In fact it still comes back around when it's spent abroad due to the global stature of the USD. Even the Austrians pretty much agree. The criticism is that a portion of that money would have gone first into capital investment - effectively adding productive assets to our balance sheet - before making its way through the economy.

I'm always confused when you comment on capital investment as if it's superior to plain old consumption (which keeping the money in house spurs).

Obviously we need capital investment but that's a function of demand, not government spending.

If we spent all our tax dollars overseas and had demand here we'd have the ability to invest in capital with private money.

It seems to me that tax dollars should spur consumption and private investors should fund capital investment as it's a..you know, 'investment'.

because what we really need right now is to steal 300 million dollars from the CDC and give it to paid actors and tv advertising buys rather than CDC uses...

also love the trickle down reference... lol

I'm not arguing that consumption doesn't occur at all, just that it should occur further downstream:

Economy A: Farmer gives 30% of his profits for a new plow; plow maker takes his family out to dinner.
Economy B: Farmer gives the government 30% of his profits; government gives the money to unemployed plow maker who takes his family out to dinner.

I'm arguing A is superior to B.

I disagree. I believe production is the only thing that can genuinely spur consumption. For example, if you have something I want, my mere wanting of what you have doesn't suffice for demand, unless I'm pointing a gun at you. Short of the latter, if I want what you have I'll have to produce something you want to give in exchange.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Say%27s_law

Your premise is flawed. There is more to production economy than farming, economy needs something to produce.

As in Economy A vs B, you forgot the (exaggerated) 30% spent on taxes. There are not enough production jobs for everyone in the US, which then requires plenty of service jobs. But wait, if no one is buying, then those jobs supporting consumption get lost.

Folks get pretty pissed when living homeless in their car, while supportive dollars go to folks wanting a boat and truck to haul it. Hence the need for tax dollars (much less the afore mentioned services that government support, aka Social Security, VA, IRS, Disaster Response, and Health Services).

Of course, if you want to defund the CDC and FDA, heck the next outbreak will be much worse.

The reason globalization took place, is the US became the victim of overdeveloped country syndrome (google). There were other folks to sell goods to, and that is what spurred the stock market. Limiting corporations to US only curbs growth. And that is a vicious cycle that trickles down, so there are more homeless people living in cars 10 fold than boat owners.

That doesn't matter to my point. For all intents it could be 0.0001% of profits spent on a wireless mouse from China. My point is that with A there's an additional item on the balance sheet.
I'm not saying there shouldn't be any government spending at all. What I'm saying is that government spending isn't the freeroll some like to make it out to be due to the opportunity cost. Whether we decide to go one way or the other is a separate issue just as when individual decide to spend all of or save a portion of their personal income.