Yes, but if you set up the Department for Building the Interstate Highway System the spending has a definable end (unless you want to pave.the.earth and even then you have an end point)

The original promise was that the Harbour Bridge toll would stay in place just long enough to pay for the construction of the Bridge (fair enough), then they decided to keep it and pay “for maintenance” but then they had a bit of surplus so they tweaked the “Sydney Harbour Bridge (Administration) Act 1932″ to allow them to spend it on other expressways and finally it just went into revenue to be spent on whatever. Also, it keeps going up faster than inflation… you do the math.

I think that I can safely predict that when the privately operated tollways move over into government hands the toll collection infrastructure will remain perfectly intact and operational. Dunno if anyone is willing to cover a bet on that one :-) we can haggle over which excuse they will use.

Definable end is absolutely irrelevant.

Secondly, it’s not easy to unwind. Governments don’t have a great track record in reducing their spending. The incentives are wrong.

Lastly, tax cuts don’t have to be unwound. You can always reduce spending further if deficits are a problem! ;-)

Yes, but if you set up the Department for Building the Interstate Highway System the spending has a definable end (unless you want to pave.the.earth and even then you have an end point)

Also if you set up the Department for Lifting Blue Eyed Blondes out of poverty there comes a point where Blue Eyed Blondes are sufficiently wealthy that the rest of the electorate resents their benefits and outvotes them. In fact, generally speaking minorities have a hell of a time getting support from the general populace at all whereas (because tax cuts are across the board) it is much harder to get the general populace to see beyond their wallet.

I think the concern re. the “welfare piggy bank” is misplaced. The middle class welfare of tax breaks from here to eternity is a much more suitable target for concern.

As soon as you set up a special Department for Stimulating Something, the primary purpose of that group of people is forever to maintain their own income stream. That means maintaining the importance of their own department. The bigger the “temporary” income stream, the more determined they will be to keep it flowing.

Soon enough, an angry and disheartened public began to hate the Democrats, hate liberals, and hate government. A faltering economy, along with a worsening war, brought Richard Nixon to the White House.

To be fair, they also hated war, and the majority of them had no interest whatsoever in whether Vietnam had a communist government or not. I would argue that many Americans voted against GWB because they didn’t like getting involved in expensive foreign wars, didn’t feel comfortable with the idea of sponsoring systematic torture, and didn’t appreciate the way government was steadily taking over their lives. They also figured that Obama could hardly do a worse job of the economy and any change was better than more of the McSame.

As Nick says spending should be finite tax cuts are not.

Tax cuts are unlikely to generate much demand when an economy is in a depression or even approaching one.

As it is Kennedy’s advisers should have told him to do neither as in a recession monetary policy is a much better toll or at least that is what Keynes would have told him.

Tax cuts generate ongoing damage to the budget. Spending is easier to choke off.

Not that big an argument for public spending I should have thought.