I have discussed this in a number of other posts, but in the modern world, government has become as much an impediment to prosperity as it has an ensurer of it. Currently the state of regulation and taxation in the first world has created an economic sclerosis in which only the biggest of businesses can be successful. As I have discussed this in depth elsewhere, I will not do so here. See:
http://ogresophist.blogspot.com/2015/01/middle-class-death-spiral.html, http://ogresophist.blogspot.com/2014/09/were-all-serfs.html, http://ogresophist.blogspot.com/2014/09/high-taxes-have-consequences.html, http://ogresophist.blogspot.com/2014/02/the-failure-of-stimulus-spending-in.html, http://ogresophist.blogspot.com/2013/12/the-minimum-wage-debate.html, http://ogresophist.blogspot.com/2013/11/the-death-of-small-business-investment.html, http://ogresophist.blogspot.com/2013/10/our-not-so-free-market-economy.html, and http://ogresophist.blogspot.com/2013/07/government-symbiosis-to-parasitic.html.
Likely I have more, but I don't feel like delving that far back. The point is that regulation has a stultifying effect on business and economic prosperity. It can be justified if the public need is great enough, i.e. public safety laws and the like; but in the modern era, protecting the populace has become the battle cry of petty totalitarians trying to push through their crony capitalist reforms. As a result, I'm wary of any politician wielding the banner of protecting the populace.
One of the side effects of government overreach and largess is a sprawling and extensive regulatory state backed up by large police and military forces. This all costs a ton of money, which government must extract from its economy. But, since taxes are unpopular with voters, governments tend to run astronomical deficits. These debts need to be paid, like any other, if the government wishes to remain in the good graces of international investors. When they don't, well... you get Greece and Argentina.
The obvious answer to this problem is for government to shrink, allow the mechanisms of a freer market to spin and start creating wealth again for a broader swath of the population, and generally get out of the way of progress. The problem here is this requires power hungry regulators to release power, so it almost never happens. The end result of this has been the current world wide stagnation. Governments, faced with stagnating economies and growing debts have settled on a new weapon. This weapon? Monetary Easing!
What is Monetary Easing? Since governments have learned that you can't simply print money, a la the Weimar Republic (as it results in catastrophic inflation), they have found a new way to flood the world with their currency, devaluing it. This new method is called "Monetary Easing". What government does is use its central bank to buy financial assets on the open market (usually the government's own debt). This is sold to the public as a relatively risk free way of making exports more competitive without harming the currency. Does this work? Nope. Just ask Japan, and to a lesser extent the USA. Today's Wall Street Journal has a terrific analysis of Japan's economy responding to its central bank using monetary easing. Instead of economic prosperity and a flood of new exports, Japan has seen real wages fall and exports remain stagnant. Read more here: http://www.wsj.com/articles/japans-devaluation-warning-for-europe-1426548519 . The conclusion to reach here is that there are no silver bullets to economic woes created by the bloated parasite of government sucking the life blood out of the economy. Only real reforms will cause positive change. Unfortunately, this is unlikely to occur.
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