Professor Dwight Lee of SMU makes this important case here. While it’s an article of faith among “liberals” that increased government spending is needed to “get the economy going again” Lee explains that it just shifts resources from market-determined uses to politically-determined uses and interferes with necessary free market adjustments following recessions. Government spending doesn’t improve the economy’s efficiency, but it does give politicians an excuse to do what they love to do — spend other people’s money.