I would like to offer this analogy, for anybody out there dealing with an individual or individuals who seem convinced that the problem with the 2009 ‘stimulus’ was that it was not large enough:

Imagine, if you will, you have a friend, and he’s a drunk.  And he’s in trouble: he needs five hundred bucks to get out from under his bills, but he doesn’t have it, and things get a little worse every month because of it.  So you give him five hundred bucks… and he goes on an epic bender.  Now, here’s the question: would he have been fine if you had given him five hundred bucks for the bender, and another five hundred for his bills?  Or a thousand?  Of course not: doubling or tripling the money that you gave him would have just meant that he would have gone on a longer bender, with better ingredients.

Because that’s what drunks do.  That’s why they’re considered drunks.

Just in case the analogy is unclear: far too many people who espouse Keynesian economic theory (more accurately, their interpretation of Keynesian economic theory) seem to be doing so under the assumption that you can trust the government to spend revenue in a rational, objective, and non-partisan fashion.  As both the stimulus and Obamacare shows, this is not a particularly sensible assumption – particularly when the Democrats are in charge of the process.  Government spending is inherently wasteful at best, and corrupting at worst.   And the effects get worse, the more you spend.

Hope this helps.

Moe Lane (crosspost)

PS: I apologize to drunks everywhere for comparing them to the federal government.