I’ve wondered about this before

  

And probably I’ve wondered about this during political campaigns.  It’s about the economy.

 

The economy is made up of exchanges of goods and services (and money).  The more goods, services, and money we exchange, the more our economy is booming.  What I wonder is, does it make any difference if the exchanges are actually accomplishing anything?  Is there such a thing as good or bad exchanges of goods, services and money?  Or is the economy blind to accomplishment and all that matters is the churn?  My gut says that money spent to build a bridge or a school is more important than say money spent on a political campaign, but it all gets counted as part of our economic activity.

 

It is projected that 2.7 billion dollars will be spent on the presidential race alone in 2020.  Sure, money changes hands.  People are hired to work on campaigns.  Television and digital advertising platforms will enjoy profound benefit.  But really, an election could be accomplished for much less.  The end result of an election is that someone is going to be elected.  All that money spent doesn’t change the result.  If we eliminated billions of dollars spent on elections and limited it to a few million dollars, would we have just robbed the economy of an important component?  Should we just make everything cost more and churn more money so our economy will look better?

 

So if it doesn’t matter what the money is spent on; it just matters that money is spent; we could all just give each other ten dollars and boost the economy even more.  No change in overall dollars, we just increase the churn.  Hey; even better, everybody each just send me ten dollars and I promise, I’ll spend it on something…