[GPSCC-chat] benefits of big government

[Jim Doyle]

/Christian Parenti has an article at/
*http://tinyurl.com/88fqf57
*/titled
/*Why Climate Change Will Make
You Love Big Government
A Secret History of Free Enterprise and the
Government That Made It Possible *
/that provides numerous examples of "big" government benefits
here a sample

/As for flood insurance, the federal government is pretty much the only 
place
to get it. The National Flood Insurance Program has written 
<http://www.floodsmart.gov/floodsmart/pages/flood_facts.jsp> 5.5 million
policies in more than 21,000 communities covering $1.2 trillion worth of
property. As for the vaunted private market, for-profit insurance companies
write between 180,000 and 200,000 policies 
<http://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/technical_reports/2007/RAND_TR468.pdf> 
in a given year.
/
//and here some history
/
One can trace the origins of state participation in the economy back to
at least the founding of the republic: from Alexander Hamilton’s First Bank

of the United States, which refloated the entire post-revolutionary economy
when it bought otherwise worthless colonial debts at face value; to 
Henry Clay’s
half-realized program of public investment and planning called the 
American System;
to the New York State-funded Erie Canal, which made the future Big Apple 
the
economic focus of the eastern seaboard; to the railroads, built on 
government land
grants, that took the economy west and tied the nation together; to New 
Deal
programs that helped pulled the country out of the Great Depression and 
built
much of the infrastructure we still use like the Hoover Dam, scores of 
major
bridges, hospitals, schools, and so on; to the government-funded and 
sponsored
interstate highway system launched in the late 1950s; to the similarly 
funded space
race, and beyond. It’s simple enough: big government investments (and 
thus big
government) has been central to the remarkable economic dynamism of the 
country.