Keynesian economists perform elaborate mathematical gymnastics to “prove” that $1 of government spending magically becomes $1.50 of economic growth. This fiscal multiplier fairy tale ignores what Bastiat called the “unseen” – the productive investments that never happen because resources were seized by bureaucrats first. Every bridge to nowhere represents a thousand private innovations strangled in their cribs. The seen stimulus creates jobs for government contractors and ribbon-cutting ceremonies for politicians. The unseen is the cancer research, the small businesses, the breakthrough technologies that die stillborn because capital was diverted to political pet projects. Modern economies don’t multiply wealth through redistribution any more than you create water by moving it between buckets.