davelj made a reference up-thread to some studies that show that, in general, ROI on government spending in the past few decades has been negative. I’ve seen these studies referenced before, but never with enough details that I could really tell if the methodology was sound or the sources were unbiased.
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Actually, that’s not what I said. All I said was that from an economy-wide standpoint – that is, inclusive of government, businesses and consumers – additional debt has been yielding incrementally less GDP for a few decades. I have no idea what the ROI on government spending is, specifically. But, on an economy-wide basis, if we’re defining R=GDP growth and I=incremental debt, then yes ROI, in aggregate, has been declining (although not negative, to be clear).
