Foyle, I think you might want to re-examine the article you linked us to.

>>A good introduction would to be read J D Alt's item about the USA mobilisation for WW2 at, http://neweconomicperspectives.org/2013/08/mobilization-and-money.html<<

Trying to create a linkage between events of seventy years ago with our current world would always be a major challenge. But your reference squibs out pretty early, with this gem:

"...even more important, how did we travel from that VJ day of economic triumph to our sorry state of today, where we think we are so “broke” we can’t even afford to hire enough fire-fighters and equipment to put out the forest-fires raging in our western states?"

What possible connection can be manufactured for that juxtaposition? What relationship exists between a heavily industrialized society forged from government money, that was able to develop new markets across the world for its products at a time when the whole of Europe was both impoverished and without viable industry of its own, and forest fires in 2013?

It might help if you were to explain at the same time, where the money to "put out" these fires would come from, given that merely containing them required a billion dollar expenditure...

http://www.foxnews.com/weather/2013/08/21/wildfire-spending-tops-1-billion-as-over-40-uncontained-blazes-rage-across-west/

There is very little that is more capable of reducing an argument to zero, than this kind of threadbare, irrelevant rubbish being recruited as evidence.

It's strange how carelessly our world keeps edging towards the scenario painted in 1984.

In fact, it's rather like a self-fulfilling prophecy.

What is certain of course is that small group of humans are forever trying to find ways to completely control other humans in case they become difficult or begin to question.

Fear is a great controller. Drugs are as well. Genetic tinkering could achieve a great deal too.

The world will implode if billions of individuals seek their own destiny.

Control is the name of the new game!

Foyle
Obviously if you have no way of knowing whether government is providing too little, too much, or just enough - the quintessence of economising - then you are in no position to advise how big the deficit should be, or indeed whether it should be a surplus.

It should not be embarrassingly easy to totally demolish the theory you keep publicly and persistently pushing.

For someone *honestly* interested in *rational* theory, our discussion would look like this:
Jardine: "Do you have any rational way of knowing whether government is economising, or wasting zillions?"
Foyle: "No."
Jardine: "So that must mean your economic theory is wrong, and worthless?"
Foyle: "Yes. I'd better look for one that's true, not false."
Jardine: "Good idea."

Yet even after you have repeatedly come face-to-face with unanswerable disproofs of your entire theory (and I could provide a lot more), you don't do the intellectually honest thing, and face the fact that it's wrong. Instead you just go quiet, slink off, and pop up somewhere else re-running all the same confused nonsense that you take on authority.

Economic theory requires explanation of cause and effect, but if it's not rationally defensible, that's not theory, it's just arbitrary moralising. Yours is even worse than that, because it *just happens* to favour systematic looting of the productive class by the coercive class by channelling billions to big banks and corporations, and then you have the gall to blame unregulated capitalism for the resulting recessions.

If you want to learn *real* economic theory about *real* human beings in the *real* world, that doesn't just crumble to dust on cursory examination, read:
"Human Action" by Mises
http://mises.org/Books/humanaction.pdf

JustGiveMeAllTheFacts
Your post presupposes that economic principles are just an arbitrary series of assertions with no necessary connection to the truth, that can be changed at will. What if you're wrong?

RobertLePage
The world's population is not just so many rats in a shipping container owned by you.

<<Paul Collits is an Associate Professor at the University of Southern Queensland...>>

Australia needs more university professors like Paul.

Jardine K Jardine
You wrote,
"You can start by telling us by what rational criterion you know whether governmental provision of any given service is too much, too little, or just the right amount?"

Some government expenditures may add little to total well-being but it is the total effect of sovereign (money issuing) government expenditure which matters.

This morning a post at New Economic Perspectives made the point that when approaching close to full employment government expenditure can cause shortages and price rises in in specific items the government wishes to purchase. Such constraints require some micro management, such as slowing down specific government projects, but at any time the sovereign government (SG) has the job of managing the economy to provide the maximum feasible benefits to the people in the sovereign area. The SG is spending too much when shortages of resources, both, or either, labour or products, causes unacceptable levels of inflation.

It is simple accounting that shows that until a sovereign government spends money into the economy the private sector cannot accumulate financial savings.

As for where Howard and Costello positioned the economy for ten or eleven years, plotting the Current Account and Government Sector balances on the chart in Slide 48 of Professor Stephanie Kelton's Field Institute presentation shows that the Australian Private Sector accumulated more total debt each year, an unsustainable situation. Eventually the financial institutions run out of viable borrowers and the economy stalls.

As for pointing to experts in a particular field who do you rely on for your health requirements - the best experts or quacks?

Pericles,
You fail to see Alt's points.

During WW2, money was not a constraint in producing the goods to fight the war. Nor was it a constraint in rebuilding Europe through the Marshall Plan after the destruction of that war. After the war, the transition to the peace was poorly managed in the USA as consumers wanted to spend the savings accumulated as war bonds faster than, for example, the Ford plants' automotive manufacture could be ramped up after being used to produce one Liberator bomber per hour and thousands of trucks and tanks.

Alt simply makes the point that money should never be the constraint when the well-being of the community needs some particular facility such as fire-fighters. The constraints are what resources are needed and can they be made available. That requires governments to pick winners and they tend to do that better that many companies. Look at the mistakes of BHP and Tio in past years.

One point that the neweconomicperspectives blog is always stressing is that a Sovereign Govt. spends first then decides how much of its IOUs should be left in the system, i.e. what the tax level should be. All tax money collected is destroyed.

Please read the theories that have been developed in economics in the last 15 years. Randall Wray, Stephanie Kelton and Bill Mitchell are leaders in the field.