The analyses of these activities are straightforward exercises in microeconomics. If government takes money from taxpayers and redistributes it to government employees, contractors, or beneficiaries, that’s money the taxpayer can’t spend, save, or invest that will be spent, saved, or invested by the government’s payee. The propensities to spend, save, and invest may differ between taxpayers and government payees, but all three activities are necessary in an economy and governments have no special insight into the optimal mixture. They don’t even know beforehand what those propensities are, although many studies in abstruse economics journals have tried to determine them. The studies amount to high-toned guesswork, a search for an answer to a question that doesn’t need to be asked unless one believes that governments are better at deciding how much people spend, save, and invest than the people themselves.

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