Whether waste outweighs the benefit of extra circulation is entirely up for debate. Government does ensure more jobs for more people, but at what cost to the public who was already working?
That, I believe, is the right question.
Here is an article from the Mises site that talks about government spending and its affects on the economy. It's rather long so I've included a couple paragraphs of what I feel summarizes his main points:
"Government, in fact, is a large disequilibrating force on the market. It forcibly redistributes economic goods, removing them from a process of economization and instead investing them toward the realization of less important, or less preferred, ends. In other words, it distorts the continuous process of coordination."
He goes on to say:
"Whether some degree of government is necessary to allow the market to operate, while being outside the scope of this essay, deserves commentary. The belief that government is necessary to at least guarantee individuals's property rights is not uncommon. However, knowing that property rights are absolutely essential for a working coordination process, it seems difficult to think that individuals themselves would consider the allotment of resources toward the end of securing their property rights as having secondary importance to something else — especially since the attainment of "something else" may require secure property rights."
And finally:
"Overall, we can safely conclude that government spending causes more harm than good; it redistributes the means of production toward the attainment of ends considered inferior by the individuals who make up the society that government is allegedly acting to improve."
I think that last sentence pretty well describes my opinion. In the question of
"more bottom up or more top down" I am definitely supporting the "bottom up" philosophy.
