The reason there is an interventionist-welfare state is that there are individuals and groups in the society who want “other people’s money.” The political process is the mechanism that these individuals and groups use to get that money via regulation, protections, and redistribution.
“Following the money,” therefore, can be extemely useful to determining what is behind much of what government does. This is what I do in a new piece I’ve written entitled, “Obama Thanks His Friends: Government Spending and Union Support.”
I trace out the clear connection between the Obama Administration’s activist policies for bailouting out the auto industry, Federal funds for public schools, and “stimulus” spending to supposedly create jobs in infrastructure projects to the huge political campaign contributions that the Democrats have received over the elections cycles from the trade unions since 1990.
Often there is a clear logic to simply “follow of the money,” specially when those spending the money do so to buy friendly politicians in office hope to get even more of other people’s money.
Richard Ebeling
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I believe the Latin term is “cui bono,” which gets at the same idea as “follow the money”
Obama is doing the same things FDR did with the New Deal, which was nothing more than an elaborate political patronage machine. Reward your friends, punish your enemies, buy votes, and get re-elected. That is politics in a nutshell.
Further, when the economy takes a dive because of past interventions, conjure up a modern day “Hitler,” scare the sheeple, and start a war. When the rabble start to complain, turn the guns on them.
“The reason there is an interventionist-welfare state is that there are individuals and groups in the society who want “other people’s money.”
I beg to differ, the real reason there is an interventionist-welfare state is that most individuals and groups are unwilling to defend their money from looters.
Most agree to pay taxes, abide by all the rules and laws, even unjust and intrusive ones.
Those who want other people’s money are right to do so, after all it is a survival instinct to rob other’s possession in order to survive.
But those who do not defend themselves, those are the ones I blame for the welfare state.
This line of thinking is faulty, because it denies, that even politicians might have a worldview according to which they act.
If a lobby has the option to give money to 2 different politicians, it will give more money to the one, whose political goals are more in line with the lobby interests.
E.g. if there is one politician, who is convinced, that global warming catastrophe can only be averted by massively subsiding solar panels and another who is also convinced about global warming, but thinks that only lots of new nuclear plants will help, the first will get more money from the solar industry, while the latter will get more from the nuclear industry.
So the trail of money cannot prove in any way, that politicians were bought, at best it shows, what are the lobby groups estimates of the policies a politician will pursue.
The only exception is that, if the money is correlated with a change in the policies of a politician. Then it is plausible, that he has been bought.
But Obama never realy changed any of his positions, he only obscured them, he always was a rather leftleaning politician.
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