UNDER CAPITALISM BILLIONS ARE EARNED BY CAPITALISTS’ HARD WORK

Someone apparently influenced by Marxism, and writing on Twitter under the handle “@btclbc,” says, “No man in history has ever worked hard or `earned’ a billion dollars. At that level your wealth has come from the exploitation of others. Plain and simple.” (His comment is at (https://twitter.com/marcuslemonis/status/1191950678958190592?s=12)

To which, I say, forget the first billion and let’s talk about all the billions beyond that, that someone can earn only by hard work. So, here’s a billionaire who, thanks to his billion, can afford to hire, organize, train, and equip 10,000 workers to carry out his plans.

Isn’t he responsible for the results and didn’t he work hard at putting it all together and achieving the outcome he wanted? which outcome, let us assume, is the accumulation of his second billion.

Or do you think that 10,000 workers happened to meet at a football game, say, and all burst out with “Hey, gang, let’s all go and produce some product we never thought of, by means we know not how, with equipment we know not what?”

The billionaire earned his second billion…and his 100^th billion by providing the guiding, directing intelligence at the highest level in the organization he controls, and using his capital to carry out his plans, which is also how he earned his first billion.

His labor is primarily a labor of thinking, planning, and decision making and its results vary with the means he employs for carrying out his plans. Just as a manual worker digs a hole of very different size with the same amount of labor and effort, depending on whether he digs with his bare hands, a shovel, or a steam shovel, so the results achieved by a capitalist vary with the size of the capital he employs. 

His position is analogous to that of Columbus, Napoleon, or the leader of a country. It is analogous to that of whoever in an organization of people provides the guiding, directing intelligence at the highest level in the achievement of a goal.

Just as the credit for the discovery of America, the French victory at Austerlitz, and the foreign policy of a country, belongs respectively to Columbus, Napoleon, and the country’s leader, so, in a business firm, it belongs to such men as Bezos, Gates, and Zuckerberg, and before them, to men like Ford and Rockefeller, Carnegie and Vanderbilt.

Gates played an enormous role in making possible the computer age, Bezos in adapting retailing to the existence of the computer age, and Zuckerberg in adapting social interaction to the existence of the computer age.

Transforming the economy of the world in these ways resulted in and requires vast fortunes. The fortunes were earned by the introduction of improvements, which resulted in high profits. The high profits were overwhelmingly saved and reinvested, providing the capitalists with more capital with which to pursue their plans.

The fortunes were and are used in bringing the improvements to billions of people around the world and in financing the development of still further improvements.

Just like the crew members on Columbus’s ships, the soldiers in Napoleon’s army, and a country’s embassy employees, the employees of the billionaires, and of businessmen/capitalists in general, are the "HELP" in producing the results achieved by the billionaires.

For more, be sure to read my essays “HOW THE 1 PERCENT PROVIDES THE STANDARD OF LIVING OF THE 99 PERCENT" and “DEMAND FOR COMMODITIES IS NOT DEMAND FOR LABOR” VERSUS THE MARXIAN EXPLOITATION THEORY. They’re 99¢ each at https://amzn.to/32T8Sg4 and http://amzn.to/2AIKl0d respectively.

And for a full treatment of the subject, read my book Capitalism: A Treatise on Economics, available at https://amzn.to/2NLvVVZ. Read in particular pp. 296-326, 462-498, and 613-669.

The link to all of my writings on Amazon is https://amzn.to/2NLvVVZ

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A VIDEO VERSION OF THIS POST APPEARS AT:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ESp8ktLBTo4 

ELIZABETH WARREN DOUBLES DOWN

Elizabeth Warren has announced that her single-payer Medicare-for-all plan, which would eliminate private medical insurance, would increase government spending by $20.5 trillion over the next ten years (https://nyti.ms/2JJpKOP.) Others say, $34 trillion (https://wapo.st/2qfH1YY).  

Currently, Federal Government spending is $4.1 trillion per year. So, at a cost of between $2 and $3.4 trillion per year, her plan would represent an increase in government spending of roughly 50% to 85%.

To help finance it, she announced yesterday that she wants to double the tax on wealth over $1 billion to 6% from her initial proposal of 3%. She claims that only the taxes of the rich will be increased, not those of the middle class.

According to Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders, and countless others who know nothing of the role of capital in production, i.e., how it is the source of the supply of products and the demand for labor, the average person is untouched by reductions in the capital of the rich.

He may be hurt by increases in his own taxes, they believe, but certainly not by increases in the taxes of the rich which reduce their capitals not his ability to spend.

This is exactly like saying that while the average person would be hurt if his own home burned down, he has nothing to lose if the stores where he shops and the factories et al. that supply those stores, burned down and this happened throughout the economic system.

Warren, Sanders et al. have never learned that in a division-of-labor society, which is what capitalism is, every individual is benefitted by the wealth and the talents of all who supply him and that he would benefit still more if they were richer and more talented.

And he would earn more too, as the result of their greater capitals resulting in greater competition for his labor.

Warren and Sanders and the rest are ruled by an anti-social, indeed, sociopathic philosophy. They are profoundly ignorant and as dangerous as they are ignorant. They know nothing but envy and hatred of the rich.

And they are ready to use physical force to impose their programs, which they seek to enact into law to which they will compel obedience at the point of a gun.

For answers to them, including how to make medical care in particular better and more affordable, read these two titles immediately below:

They’re available for 99¢ each at https://amzn.to/2N44uTu and https://amzn.to/2OjmKxy, respectively.



For a comprehensive, in-depth defense of capitalism and thorough-going critique of socialism, go to https://amzn.to/2PM19ut and buy and read this book, which is my magnum opus:

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A link to the audio/visual version of this post:

ELIZABETH WARREN'S WEALTH TAX

Elizabeth Warren is an economics ignoramus and thus unqualified to be President of the United States. She does not know that the wealth of the hated rich is in the form of capital—means of production—and as such is the foundation of the supply of products and the demand for labor.

Because of her ignorance, she advocates a wealth tax that every year would take away 2% of the wealth of everyone worth more than $50 million, and 3% of the wealth of everyone worth more than $1 billion.

This taxing away of capital means less means of production and thus less production and higher prices. At the same time, it means less demand for labor and thus lower wages.

Elizabeth Warren’s program is a call for mass impoverishment. And the same is true of the essentially similar programs of her fellow haters of the rich, such as Bernie Sanders and AOC.

These haters of the rich think they can get away with it because the rich are a small minority and do not have nearly the number of votes as the mobs the haters are trying to inflame. (This is what the haters mean by “democracy.”)

The rational self-interest of everyone lies with the freedom of everyone to become as rich and successful as he can. In a capitalist economy, others’ greater success is not the measure of our failure but the major source of our success.

I am benefitted by the billions of Bezos, Gates, and Buffet et al. If they were no richer than peasant farmers, I would be impoverished. If they were half as rich as they are, I would be much less well-off than I am.

Under capitalism, the effects of unequal wealth run parallel to those of unequal intelligence. The intelligence of Aristotle and Newton and all the other great geniuses of philosophy, science, mathematics, and the arts, cost the average person nothing, but give him everything.

The wealth of the rich, bearing the imprint of the discoveries of geniuses and employed in producing products that the average person buys and in employing the labor that he sells is responsible for the great and growing wealth the average person enjoys under capitalism.

Warren, Sanders, and probably the whole rest of the field of Democratic contenders should withdraw in shame for their ignorance of economics.  

If they’d like to learn economics, they should start with my essay “HOW THE 1 PERCENT PROVIDES THE STANDARD OF LIVING OF THE 99 PERCENT.” It’s available for 99¢ at https://amzn.to/32T8Sg4.

After that, they should read the works of Ludwig von Mises (https://mises.org/) and Ayn Rand (https://aynrand.org/) and my own Capitalism: A Treatise on Economics (https://amzn.to/2PM19ut).

Maybe they will then become defenders rather than destroyers of wealth, capital, and capitalism.

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A link to the audio/visual version of this post:

AOC VS. ZUCKERBERG AND FACEBOOK

AOC wants Facebook not to accept political ads that contain lies. She’s doesn’t realize that if Facebook had that policy, it wouldn’t accept any ads promoting socialism in any way, which means it wouldn't run any ads by her or for her.

Because contrary to practically everything that socialists say, the truth is that socialism is a sociopathic philosophy conceived in gross error and ignorance and culminating in economic chaos, enslavement, terror, and mass murder. To claim anything else is a lie. 

Just to establish socialism (understood as government ownership of the means of production) requires armed robbery and murder on a mass scale. For proof of the nature of socialism, read my essay whose title is immediately below. It’s available for 99¢ at https://amzn.to/2N44uTu.

INFLATION DELUSION AND INEQUALITY

In their ignorance of economics, Warren and Sanders et al. are misled by the government’s inflation of the money supply into believing that the stagnation and decline of our economic system in recent decades is the result of growing economic inequality.

The truth is that both the appearance of increasing wealth of the rich and the reality of declining actual wealth are the result of the government’s pouring new and additional money into the stock and real estate markets, where the effect is to raise prices.

Since the rich own far more stock and real estate than the average person, the effect of this rise in prices is that economic inequality appears to increase. (Somehow the sharp declines in apparent economic inequality that necessarily accompany market busts, are not reported.)

While the rich appear to gain because of the rise in the prices of their assets, in reality they lose.

This is because the taxation of their profits on the sale of stocks and real estate prevents the funds accruing to them from keeping pace with the rise in prices. Their funds grow only to the extent of what remains after the payment of taxes.

For example, imagine that the infusion of new and additional money into the stock and real estate markets increases prices there by 10%. Originally, one had an asset worth $1 million. Now it can be sold for $1.1 million.

But if the capital gains tax is 25%, the seller ends up with only $1.075 million, a 7.5% gain, while the prices of the assets available for him to purchase have increased by 10% on average.

This is a major way in which inflation—the government’s expansion of the money supply—destroys an economic system. It creates the appearance of business prosperity along with the fact of general impoverishment, which results in blaming poverty on business and profits.

To understand how this proposition applies in terms of business accounting for inventories and plant and equipment, see my Capitalism: A Treatise on Economics, pp. 229-30 and 931-33. (My book is available at https://amzn.to/2PM19ut.)

The solution is a money the government can’t create, namely, gold. The gold standard must be an essential part of the program of advocates of capitalism. It would put an end to the artificial creation of profits and capital gains causing higher taxes and reduced buying power.

Ironically, what our economy has been suffering from in the last decades is precisely the effects of a wealth tax—a wealth tax created by the ballooning of profits and capital gains caused by the inflation of the money supply.

The resulting additional taxes on the inflation-created profits and capital gains make after-tax profits and capital gains insufficient to keep pace with the rise in prices. The result is a shrinkage in actual assets. The Democrat dunces want still more of this.

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Here's the audio/visual version of this post:

COLUMBUS AND WESTERN CIVILIZATION

October 12, 2019 is Columbus Day, 527 years after Christopher Columbus first discovered America.

Columbus discovered America from the perspective of Western civilization, whose members had not previously known of its existence. He did not discover it from the perspective of the natives—the “indigenous people”—who already lived in the Americas.

However, with a properly functioning educational system, the descendants of the natives of Columbus’s time, would today be members of Western civilization and thus join in regarding Columbus as having discovered America, for Western civilization would now be their civilization.

They would have studied and made their own the ideas and values that constitute Western civilization. Thus, they too would see the world and its history from the perspective of Western civilization.

They would have done so, just as we today see it from that perspective, not from the perspective of the savages who comprise the overwhelming majority of everyone’s ancestors.

(Just think: Man has been on earth for possibly a million years. Yet civilization as such is not more than about 5,000 years old. The 995,000 years before civilization were years of savagery.)

To the extent that the descendants of the savages of 1492 do not accept Western civilization as their own, it is the result of the educational system failing in its proper function of being the transmitter of civilization.

Instead, in the last decades, it has become the opposite, namely, “an agency working for the barbarization of youth,” as I explain in the  concluding section of this post.

WHAT IS WESTERN CIVILIZATION?

From the perspective of intellectual and cultural content, Western civilization represents an understanding and acceptance of the following:

the laws of logic; the concept of causality and, consequently, of a universe ruled by natural laws intelligible to man; on these foundations, the whole known corpus of the laws of mathematics and science; the individual's self-responsibility based on his free will to choose between good and evil; the value of man above all other species on the basis of his unique possession of the power of reason; the value and competence of the individual human being and his corollary possession of individual rights, among them the right to life, liberty, property, and the pursuit of happiness; the need for limited government and for the individual's freedom from the state; on this entire preceding foundation, the validity of capitalism, with its unprecedented and continuing economic development in terms of division of labor, technological progress, capital accumulation, and rising living standards; in addition, the importance of visual arts and literature depicting man as capable of facing the world with confidence in his power to succeed, and music featuring harmony and melody.

THE UNIVERSALIZABILITY OF WESTERN CIVILIZATION

Western civilization is not a product of geography. It is a body of knowledge and values.

Any individual, any society, is potentially capable of adopting it and thereby becoming “Westernized.” The rapidly progressing economies of the Far East are all “Western” insofar as they rest on a foundation of logic, mathematics, science, technology, and capitalism—exactly the same logic, mathematics, science, technology, and capitalism that are essential features of “Western” civilization.

THE OBJECTIVE SUPERIORITY OF WESTERN CIVILIZATION

The ability to acquire and disseminate knowledge provides an objective standard for judging civilizations.

Those peoples who possess a written language may be called civilized, inasmuch as writing is an indispensable means for the transmission of substantial knowledge, and thus for the accumulation of knowledge from generation to generation.

Those who possess not only a written language but also knowledge of the laws of logic and the principle of causality are in a position to accumulate and transmit incomparably more knowledge than people who possess merely the art of writing alone.

On this basis, Greco-Roman civilization is on a higher plane than any that had preceded it.

Finally, a civilization which possesses, in addition, still further fundamental applications of human reason, such as the far more extensive development and elaboration of the principles of mathematics and science, the existence of the freedoms of speech and press, and the development of a division of labor economy, is a higher civilization than even that of Greece and Rome.

The freedoms of speech and press are an essential guarantee of the individual's right to disseminate knowledge without being stopped by the fears or superstitions of any group backed by the coercive power of the state.

A division of labor economy makes possible a corresponding multiplication of the amount of knowledge which is applied to production and the meeting of the needs of human life, for such knowledge is essentially in proportion to the number of separate occupations being practiced, each with its own specialized body of knowledge.

Equally important, a division of labor economy means that geniuses can devote their talents full time to such fields as science, education, invention, and business, with a corresponding progressive increase in knowledge and improvement in human life.

WESTERN CIVILIZATION AND EDUCATION

Wherever the intellectual substance of Western civilization is known, its imparting to the minds of students is virtually coextensive with the process of education.

For the intellectual substance of Western civilization is nothing other than the highest level of knowledge attained anywhere on earth, in virtually every aspect of every field, and if the purpose of education is to impart knowledge, then its purpose is to impart Western civilization.

THE RACISM OF CONTEMPORARY EDUCATION

In earlier centuries, men of European descent observed the marked cultural inferiority of the native populations of Africa, Asia, and the Western hemisphere, and assumed that the explanation lay in a racial inferiority of these peoples.

In passing this judgment, they forgot the cultural state of their own ancestors, which was as much below their own as that of any of these peoples. Even more important, they failed to see how in accepting racism, they contradicted the essential “Western” doctrine of individual free will and individual responsibility for choices made. For in condemning people as inferior on the basis of their race, they were holding individuals morally responsible for circumstances over which they had absolutely no control.

At the same time, they credited themselves with accomplishments which were hardly their creations, but those of a comparative handful of other individuals, most of whom happened to be of the same race and who, ironically enough, often had had to struggle against the indifference or even outright hostility of the great majority of the members of their race in order to create civilization.

Today, the critics of what has come to be called “Eurocentrism” rightly refuse to accept any form of condemnation for their racial membership. They claim to hold that race is irrelevant to morality and that therefore people of every race are as good as people of every other race.

But then they assume that if people of all races are equally good, all civilizations and cultures must be equally good. They derive civilization and culture from race, just as the European racists did. And this is why they too must be called racists.

They differ from the European racists only in that while the latter started with the judgment of an inferior civilization or culture and proceeded backwards to the conclusion of an inferior race, the former begin with the judgment of an equally good race and proceed forwards to the conclusion of an equally good civilization or culture. The error of both sets of racists is the same: the belief that civilization and culture are racially determined.

THE DEVALUATION OF KNOWLEDGE

The racism of today’s, leftist racists, which has permeated the educational system for the last several decades, implies a radical devaluation of civilization, knowledge, and education.

These new racists do not want students to study non-Western civilizations and the conditions of primitive peoples from the perspective of seeing how they lag behind Western civilization and what they might do to catch up. Study from that perspective would be denounced as seeing the world through a “Western lens.” It would be considered offensive to people of non-West- European origin.

No, what they want is to conduct the study of the various civilizations and even the state of outright savagery itself in a way that makes all appear as equal. It is assumed, for example, that black students can feel the equal of white students only if their sub-Saharan ancestors are presented as, in a fundamental sense, culturally equivalent to modern West Europeans or Americans.

Now such a program means the explicit obliteration of distinctions between levels of civilization, and between civilization and savagery. It presents ignorance as the equivalent of knowledge, and superstition as the equivalent of science.

Everything—logic, philosophy, science, law, technology—is to be ignored, and a culture limited to the level of making dugout canoes is to be presented as the equivalent of one capable of launching spaceships. And all this is for the alleged sake of not offending anyone who supposedly must feel inferior if such a monumental fraud is not committed.

This fraud is at the core of “fake education” and such offshoots of it as “fake journalism.” As a result of it, the day is coming when a college degree will be seen as a mark of stupidity—of someone fool enough to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars only to be immersed for four years in an intellectual cesspool. And then to be good for nothing but to contaminate the rest of society and help destroy Western civilization.

Colleges and universities in the United States have demonstrated such utter philosophical corruption in connection with this subject, that if there were a group of students who could be found willing to assert with pride their descent from the Vandals or Huns and to demand courses on the cultural contribution of their ancestors, the schools would provide such courses. All that the students would have to do to get their way is to act the part of their ancestors and threaten to burn down the campus.

But what best sums up everything involved is this: from now on, in the state of California, a student is to go through twelve years of public school, and the explicit goal of his education is that at the end of it, if he envisions Columbus being greeted by spear-carrying savages, and he happens not to be white, he should identify with the savages—and if he does happen to be white, and therefore is allowed to identify with Columbus, he should not have any idea of why it is any better to identify with Columbus than with the savages.

This is no longer an educational system. Its character has been completely transformed and it now clearly reveals itself to be what for many decades it has been in the process of becoming: namely, an agency working for the barbarization of youth.

This is at the base of the profound ignorance of many college and graduate students and their readiness to use physical force as an argument against intellectual opponents. In such behavior, they clearly reveal themselves already to be barbarians.

Let us celebrate today, Columbus Day, in the knowledge that we stand for Western Civilization and invite everyone to become part of it by gaining the education, above all in philosophy, history, and economics, of which they have thus far been deprived.

***

This post is based on tweet-threads published on Twitter between 10/10/19 and 10/12/19 and drawn from my essay “Contemporary Education’s Racist Road to Barbarism.” The essay is available at https://amzn.to/33qbNNj for 99¢.

Off the Beaten Path

The source of men’s greatest, most intense pleasure is women. For a man, even the mere sight of an attractive woman is something that contributes to his sense that life is worth living.

The Bible says that to get Eve, Adam had to give up one of his ribs. If it were true, what this story would signify is that Adam had made the most profitable trade in the history of the universe.

Even though the story of Adam and Eve is a myth, men nevertheless do enjoy the immeasurable gain to their existence that is constituted by the existence of women. The existence of women is the greatest gain men can have. (Of course, they would not even be alive without them.)

In view of the value of women and the esteem in which they deserve to be held, it’s sad to learn that there are actually men so small and ungrateful that they seek fame and glory by stealing athletic prizes from women.

They pretend to be women, enter all-female athletic competitions, and then win them by virtue of their greater strength and stamina as men. This is FRAUD! Hopefully, the public will wake up to it before they try to get away with it at a grand-slam women’s tennis tournament.

Embellished News at the New York Times

Years ago, in New York, Chicago, and many other major cities, city governments created local monopolies for taxicabs. They required possession of a medallion to operate one. The value of a medallion reached $1 million-plus in NY and $400K in Chicago.

Then, in the last few years, came Uber, Lyft, and others. Not at all surprisingly, the value of medallions plunged. In NYC today, they’re going for about $200K; in Chicago, for about $30K. The plunge equivalently reduced the net worth of the medallion owners.

Many of those who had borrowed money to buy their medallions ended up not only with no equity in them but substantial debts equal to the unpaid portion of their loan balance. End of story. End of a rational story, that is.

The Times’ story (which can be found at https://nyti.ms/30OnkEh), is subtitled “New Yorkers Preyed on Chicago Cabbies.” Instead of presenting the simple, logical explanation that is called for, it treats Chicago as if it were a unique case, explained by evil deeds of New Yorkers.
This is the kind of story that makes one wonder if The Times has editors any more, and what kind of reporters it has. Or perhaps the problem is that writers at The Times are paid by the word, and so pad their pieces with reams of stupid, irrelevant junk.

A Major Fact About Profits Almost Totally Ignored

Profits are sales minus costs. The costs reflect expenditures of money made in the past, sometimes, as in the case of depreciation on buildings, decades in the past. In contrast, the sales reflect money spent in the present, or at least in the current year.

To the extent that the quantity of money and thus volume of spending in the economic system increase over time, sales increase correspondingly, which means that profits increase correspondingly, because the costs are determined by expenditures already made.

The percentage rate of increase in the quantity of money and volume of spending can be understood as adding an approximately equivalent percentage to the rate of profit. Thus if money and spending increase at 2% per year, the rate of profit, instead of being, say, 5%, will be 7%.

To understand this point, imagine that without any increase in money and spending, a merchant would buy his goods on a given day for $100, and sell them a year later for $105. But if over that year there is a 2% increase in money and spending, he will sell his goods for 2% more.

His profit, instead of being $105 minus $100, will be $105 x 1.02 minus $100, i.e., it will be $107.1 minus $100—approximately 7% instead of just 5%.

No doubt surprisingly to many, insofar as profits are subject to taxation, the more rapidly the quantity of money and volume of spending increase, and the higher the rate of profit becomes, the worse things are from the perspective of real wealth and income.

This is because the increase in money and spending raise prices. The taxation of profits, however, prevents the funds accruing to sellers from keeping pace with the rise in prices. Their funds grow only to the extent of what remains after the payment of taxes.

For example, imagine that money and spending increase by 10% per year and that prices rise by 10% per year. The rate of profit will be equivalently higher.

But if half of those profits are taxed away, business firms are left with sales proceeds only 5% higher and yet must pay prices 10 percent higher.

This is a major way in which inflation—the government’s expansion of the money supply—destroys an economic system. It creates the appearance of business prosperity along with the fact of general impoverishment, which results in blaming poverty on business and profits.

The solution is a money the government cannot create, namely, gold. The gold standard must be an essential part of the program of all advocates of capitalism.

The Effect of Taxing Stock Market Gains on the Demand for Means of Production

Concerning my August 20, 2019 post "The Wealth of the Wealthy," a Twitter follower has written: "Much of capitalists’ wealth is in shares of stock purchased in the secondary market. Is such wealth invested in the means of production?" (http://bit.ly/2OnF9HS) Answer Wealth is material goods made by man, including material goods whose wealth character is created by man, such as land, mineral deposits, and domesticated animals. Stocks, bonds, and other financial assets are not wealth but claims to wealth. Nor are they means of production.
However, taxing the capitalists’ financial assets is tantamount to taxing their wealth in means of production in that having to sell these assets to pay taxes takes away funds that otherwise would have been used to purchase means of production. Thus, the effect of the tax payments is reduced spending for means of production.
This is obviously true if the buyers of the stocks or bonds the capitalists are forced to sell were themselves planning either to buy new issues of stock or to lend their funds to business firms. That money goes to the government instead.
It is also true if the buyers were planning simply to buy
other already existing financial assets but whose sellers were planning either to buy new issues of stock or to lend their funds to business firms. The money provided to pay taxes does not reach these sellers.
It is also true no matter how many additional rounds of purchases and sales of existing financial assets we introduce. At some point taxes paid by the sale of financial assets result in correspondingly less spending for means of production.
Thus, the policy of increasing government spending based on taxes on the rich means increased government spending at the expense of reduced spending for the means of production. It’s a policy of “eating the seed corn.”
For elaboration on the consequences of increasing government consumption expenditure at the expense of capitalists’ productive expenditure, see my Capitalism: A Treatise on Economics, pp. 622-642.