Quote of the Day

"If [your] child is 40 years of age and still living at home and says, 'hey mom and dad, you didn't give me my allowance this week,' you really haven't provided an atmosphere for a productive human being."

That's from Joe Manchin, Governor of West Virginia, discussing the dependence on government money in West Virginia. In that wild and wonderful state, 52% of state spending is done by the government sector. The quote is from a while back I think, but is in respond to a great book called Unleashing Capitalism: Why Prosperity Stops at the West Virginia Border and How to Fix It, which you can pick up through the West Virginia Policy Foundation.

Think about that 52% number for a moment, though - government money comes from taxpayers. Some of that money is going to be federal dollars, but a whole lot of it is drawn from in-state. So WV is giving money back - in the form of job assistance, welfare, subsidies, government jobs - to the very people it got money from in the first place. Money is going into the WV economy only after it is taken out of it first.

Private sector growth offers a different model, where someone else fronts the money for, say, a new car plant. The plant creates jobs, which creates money that doesn't cost WV citizens anything. Jobs provide skills, skills inspire entrepreneurs, entrepreneurs set up new businesses with private money, those new businesses create new jobs. The process repeats, the economy grows, and everyone, especially the middle and lower classes, wins.

Overnight change? No - only government can promise that. Sustainable change and long-term improvement? Yes - that's what the market does.