It is when the porn industry asks for a $5 billion dollar bailout that I hope citizens have an interest in just where our tax dollars go.  On the other hand, when I mentioned this bailout to the president of the Mackinac Center for Public Policy, Joe Lehman, his response was something to the effect: “Why wait to be the last to ask for a bailout?  The printing presses mightbreak down by that point.”  This led me to the depressing reminder that citizens wouldn’t be the ones funding penthouses for playmates.  Rather, we would be victims of government-induced inflation.  Printing more money doesn’t create more wealth, it merely decreases the value of the dollar.  James Prior, former UK Leader of the House of Commons, said it well in 1980 when (during Britain’s recession) he noted, “Spending our way out of a recession is an option that no longer exists for us.  The experience of the last 15 years shows that in each recession we have started with unemployment at a higher level.  We started this recession with about 700,000 more unemployed than we started the previous recession.”  When a country attempts to spend its way to productivity, it is merely setting itself up for future (and more painful) problems.  Prior understood that in order to help insure equilibrium in the markets, compensation should be based on productivity, not accustomed standard of living.  Spending policy that runs contrary to this idea violates one of the principles outlined in Lawrence Reed’s Seven Principles of Sound Public Policy, which states “Sound policy requires that we consider long-run effects and all people, not simply short-run effects and a few people.” 

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