ABSTRACT
Government in general and defense in particular are parasitic excrescences upon the real economy of private producers of things. In the name of the Keynesian delusion that governments can fine-tune the economy, resources have been shunted to an unproductive state sector, starving the engine of postwar growth. Growth of the public sector in the postwar period was offered up as scapegoat. Opinion as to whether government should or even could do anything about social and economic problems moved towards the conservative end of the Left-Right political spectrum. The analysis underlying the new Classical remake of Smitho-Marxian parasite theory is rendered in the title of a book first published in the London Sunday Times in 1975 by the Oxford economists Robert Bacon and Walter Eltis, Britain's Economic Problem Too Few Producers. The roster of 'producers', of who bears a striking resemblance to the old-fashioned list of 'commodity producers' advanced by Classical-Marxian modists from Adam Smith to Maxine Molyneux.
