Here we shall have to say simply that all government expenditures must eventually be paid out of the proceeds of taxation; that inflation itself is merely a form, and a particularly vicious form, of taxation.

He is merely exchanging a more liquid form of asset or credit for a less liquid form.

I am here concerned with public works considered as a means of “providing employment” or of adding wealth to the community that it would not otherwise have had.

It would be far better, if that were the choice—which it isn’t—to have maximum production with part of the population supported in idleness by undisguised relief than to provide “full employment”

buying power is wiped out to the same extent as productive power is wiped out.

But in any case, machines, inventions and discoveries increase real wages.

either immediately or ultimately every dollar of government spending must be raised through a dollar of taxation.

Therefore, for every public job created by the bridge project a private job has been destroyed somewhere else.

In order that new industries may grow fast enough it is usually necessary that some old industries should be allowed to shrink or die. In doing this they help to release the necessary capital and labor for the new industires.