No society has ever succeeded without a decent government.

We're in a classic demand-shortfall recession. There aren't enough jobs because total spending is too low. Consumers won't lead the way because they're busy paying down debt and are fearful they'll lose their jobs, if they haven't already. Businesses, which are currently sitting on mountains of cash, won't spend either, because they already have sufficient capacity to produce more than people are willing to buy.

If government is inevitable, the challenge is to come up with the most effective one possible.

The primary source of waste in government is that legislators are often under heavy pressure to vote for projects that will benefit their campaign contributors, even when those projects fail a simple cost-benefit test. But with the Supreme Court showing little interest in permitting tighter rules on campaign contributions in recent years, there is little reason to be optimistic that we'll start curbing this kind of waste any time soon.

In short both the things we feel we need and the things available for us to buy depend largely—beyond some point, almost entirely—on the things that others choose to buy.

We could curtail private spending by several trillion dollars a year without requiring painful sacrifices from anyone. That would be more than enough to rebuild our crumbling infrastructure and eliminate government indebtedness once and for all.

Only the federal government has the power to spend beyond its current revenue. It shouldn't do that when the economy is at full employment. But it's an essential step for an economy mired in recession.