Economy needs to be propped up by government spending as the marketplace fails. Private business works, but the marketplace has failed.

More corona virus relief bills are being discussed, but looks like passage is unlikely; at least for quite a while. Some Republicans, in the Senate, are worried about the growing national debt.

Seems like the economy and even the stock market depends on stimulus from government. These days, government has to create new money to keep it going. This process can be inflationary, but why isn't inflation raging?

My idea is that new money is just propping up the inflation that has already happened. Without it, the high property values, rents and other things in the economy would start deflating.

Seems like the private marketplace is broken. Private enterprise, itself, isn't necessarily broken, but the marketplace is.

By private enterprise, I mean privately owned businesses that provide goods and services. Often private companies do a better job than government bureaucracy, but companies are often doing the work that's paid for by government. Government contracts; such as developing the vaccine.

Why doesn't the private marketplace bring us the things we need without the money from government?

It's because the market, itself, is broken. We can't rely on people's mass spending habits to bring us the things society needs, for the most part. It might work to some extent, but it does need lots of infusion from government spending.

Government often has more rational spending priorities, such as providing healthcare to people based on need rather than how wealthy they are. Affordable housing seems to be another thing provided by government. We also need things like roads, police, basic scientific research; the list goes on.

The private market provides some things also; like a lot of the media. Hollywood films, pro sporting events (before the virus). Government often does chip in for building the stadiums. Here in Washington State, the private market brings the marijuana industry, now legalized in Washington State.

Thinking about failure of the marketplace, climate change comes to mind also.

Back when I was in college, it looked like we were running out of oil. The price was going up. It looked like the marketplace might work to push us toward alternative energy because oil would get so expensive that other forms of energy would be cheaper by comparison. The path of least resistance. The market would seek the least expensive product.

Turns out private enterprise figured out how to extract more oil. The fracking revolution was born. There was fracking before, but the technology, now, has brought a glut of relatively inexpensive oil out of places, like North Dakota and Texas.

Now we have another problem. We are not running out of oil, not for a long time. The problem is climate change. Too much carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and there is no cost to releasing carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. Normal market forces of supply and demand don't work in curbing carbon emissions.

We need something like a carbon tax to rig the market so it works for the long term good of our environment.