Doug Hensley
Jul 22, 2017 · 1 min read

Governments differ in their ability to invest. PR China seems to be able to direct a considerable portion of its money into genuine investments — huge dams, solar farms, wind farms, a strong military* or less wisely, coal-fired power plants. (Another big slice goes to corruption).

The US manages to get a meaningful fraction of its money into genuine investments — the NSF, NASA, a top-notch higher ed system, a strong military* and again, a lot of waste and corruption.

(*)These two are each sensible enough except they tend to cancel each other out.

Many other countries or government entities cannot seem to invest anything. It all flows to a bloated civil service (Greece, CA, NJ) or outright corruption (Afghanistan, Venezuela, IL, LA, MS, Detroit), or military of a size that serves no valid purpose (Russia).

A fair amount of private investment goes to purposes other than palaces. Basic necessities such as food are now so abundant that instead of hunger being the inescapable lot of the poor, more people than ever are obese, including many who are poor. Shantytowns are ever more solidly constructed. Our poverty, as measured by lives poorly lived, has a dimension other than the purely material, and neither the government nor private business seems well placed to address the problem.