Uncertainty in Government

I’m a pretty big fan of John Stossel.  He likes to catch government officials, pundits, celebrities, and very important people in lies hypocrisies.

In his latest article at Real Clear Politics, Stossel criticizes government spending.

He reports:

Lydia Ortega of San Jose State University told me…"What's happening now, what's making it worse, is that people don't know what's going to happen. There's so much uncertainty generated by the government spending."

"Part of the reason that people aren't spending is they don't know what these characters in Washington are going to do," says Howard Baetjer of Towson University.

I don’t wonder at all.  I always know that the government is going to spend and waste money.  That is what the government does.  More to the point how does the government doing what it always does make me, or anyone else, uncertain?  When do I go, “Oh crap, if the government didn’t do that spending on this item x, I would have made y more money?”

Don’t get me wrong, there are bunches of reasons why government spending can be bad and stupid, and even now in this recession, but “uncertainty” has to be the poorest argument of the lot.