#26 – How Government Affects Economic Progress

In this episode, Virgil goes into detail about how government affects economic progress for individuals. The government ideally should be promoting economic progress by protecting the rights of individuals and supplying a few goods that are difficult to provide through markets. Government spending is now more than a third of our economy. This fact highlights why it is important to understand how the political process affects allocating resources effectively. As government spending, subsidies, income transfers, and regulatory favors grow, businesses and other well-organized groups will expend more rent-seeking to obtain government favors that will grow their organizations. This podcast is meant to inform and expose how the connection between state and economics has led us to this crony capitalist mess in where the allocation of resources is determined by political favors rather than by consumer preferences translated through the market profit and loss system.