Misspent government funds

If you subscribe to the WSJ, I urge you to read Liberalism and Public Works, which uses Chris Christie’s decision to shut down the tunnel project as a springboard to explain that liberal entitlement programs have destroyed public works programs:

To govern is to choose, or ought to be. And the reason New Jersey and so many other states can’t afford new “infrastructure” is because the politicians who’ve been running the state have blown the budget on everything else. For years, Democrats in Trenton have steered ever-more state revenues to government employees and their pensions, while squeezing state spending on the core purposes of government such as roads. Mr. Christie is telling them that the jig is up, and that a government that tries to do everything ends up doing nothing well.

That pretty much nails it. What’s really funny is that it’s the Big Government types who think of the economy as finite, which is why they’re so focused on redistribution. Capitalists understand that a healthy, relatively unbound economy can raise the standard of living for everyone, while Marxists see the money in an economy as perpetually limited, which requires government to decide who is entitled to its benefit. That same Big Government person, however, sees the government budget as endless, capable of being supplied in perpetuity by the same people whose wealth the government relentlessly steals.