Saturday
There are only four different ways to spend money (to paraphrase Milton Friedman):
1 Spend your own money on yourself,
2 spend your own money on someone else,
3 spend someone else’s money on yourself, or
4 spend other people’s money on other people.
They are ranked in efficiency in the order enumerated. If you spend money on yourself, it most precisely targets the needs and wants of the producer and consumer. Far more so than if you spend money on someone else.
Spending other people’s money on yourself, may addresses your needs and wants to some degree or other, but it ignores the wishes of the producer who created the wealth.
Taking other people’s money and spending it on other people is the least efficient usage of money. Precision becomes a hit and miss affair at both ends of the equation.
The latter is the modern economy. Individuals struggle to afford food for their own families, while at the same time they are taxed to support meritless schemes designed to buy votes.
Governments focus entirely on 3 and 4. While they remain focused on 3 (oligarchy), then the economy can usually survive. There is only so much money required to keep a small cabal living the life of Riley.
But when they focus on 4 (democracies), they destroy economies. There is only so much capital destruction that can happen before an economy collapses.