Since the president's SOTU address it looks like "investment" and "investing" are the vogue new ways to redefine government spending. Really?
By definition it is an impossibility for government to "invest" in anything. Government has no wealth of its own to invest; it can only confiscate and borrow wealth at the detriment of taxpayers, then spend what it has confiscated and borrowed.
Investment occurs when individuals freely put up their own capital risking loss and financial detriment to themselves, for the opportunity to return a profit. If people invest, they do so freely. There is risk and there is reward or loss.
Government has no capital to invest because it has never created wealth. It can only confiscate and spend the wealth its citizens have created using the monopoly of force it necessarily holds. If it spends, it does so using force. There is no risk or market pressure to "invest" prudently as government has no wealth of its own to lose--it's your money! There is no reward because there is no way to quantify what happens when wealth is spent for political--not financial--reasons by myriad of politicians and bureaucrats. And there is no loss because government has budgeting committees and the bottomless pit of taxpayer wealth to fall back on--oh, and it also has a running line of credit with foreign governments to borrow at will and the Federal Reserve to print fiat money at will.
Was there a Department of Government Investment in Orwell's 1984?
