*snip*
>The "rich" mall-makers - as all "evil" rich people do - will want to get richer. In order to do that, they must hire people, buy supplies from companies that hire people, get services from companies that hire people, etc. All of which stimiulates the economy several orders of magnitude above what the billion dollars given directly did. That's the great thing about capitalism - even greed feeds the economy and makes the pie bigger for everyone - it HAS to happen that way. (the poor in this case would be wise to go get jobs building malls)
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Is this "trickle down" economics? Yes - of course - and if you don't believe that it is an absolute FACT of the way the economy works - then you don't understand economics 101.
Pardon me for jumping in, but I'm sorry Ken, you are pretty much embarrassing yourself here - hopefully you will not be working on financial apps in the near future.
The "pie" does not get bigger or smaller according to how you distribute the cash. 10 billion being redistributed by one mega-corp, and the same amount being redistributed by 'n' number of poor will make little difference to the actual amount of cash in circulation (where circulation includes everything tied up in pension savings, long term deposits, etc.)
"Stimulants" of the economy are things like Base Interest Rate and the amount of cash in circulation. The latter is determined (typically) by the buying or selling of Government Bonds (presumably by the Federal Reserve) - from Barron's Dictionary of Banking Terms ISBN 0-8120-9659-2, $12.95, long term debt securities of the United States government, given the highest rating available. The term refers to Treasury bonds, which have maturities of 10 to 30 years, and Series EE and Series HH Savings Bonds.
The definition of a Bond covers more than one page, so I'm not about to copy that as well.
Most economists do not believe that all government spending leads to a multiplier effect. For example, Harvard's Robert Barro published an editorial in The Wall Street Journal in 1992 titled "Keynes is Still Dead" claiming that the U.S. economy has never experienced a multiplier effect from government spending. Others claim that World War II in the 1940's, the interstate highway construction of the 1950's and the space program of the 1960's generated significant multiplier effects. The extent to which a multiplier effect exists depends in large part on whether or not the government spends taxpayer dollars in a rational manner. If the government were to allocate half of the nation's highway refurbishment spending to one state because a politician from that state managed to get the money, this would doubtfully impact the entire nation in a positive way.
Basically, there is not a compelling or cogent economic argument to help you decide whether spending money on the poor is a good or bad thing - it is almost purely one of morality.
censored.
