The farmer, the artist, and the philosopher-king

John Maynard Keynes wrote once:

"If the Treasury were to fill old bottles with banknotes, bury them at suitable depths in disused coalmines which are then filled up to the surface with town rubbish, and leave it to private enterprise on well-tried principles of laissez-faire to dig the notes up again, . . . there need be no more unemployment and, with the help of the repercussions, the real income of the community, and its capital wealth also, would probably become a good deal greater than it actually is."

This is, in a nutshell, the theory behind "Obamanomics," the hope of 70 million voters in the 2008 presidential election. Will government borrowing and spending (to create jobs and demand) deliver the promised salvation? Consider the following thought experiment:

Adam is a hardworking farmer. He produces three apples every day, enough to feed himself and two other people. Adam has a dollar and is willing to pay for some quality entertainment such as VeggieTales or Hermie & Friends. Adam's neighbor, Vladimir, is a cartoonist. He likes apples but has no money. As a free spirit, Vladimir refuses to work for a paycheck---he wants to express himself through his art. He and his muse give birth to SpongeBob and Pokémon. Adam is not impressed. So he eats one apple a day, feeds the rest to the squirrels, and waits for Vladimir to get the market signal.

Here comes Hussein. He sees a stagnating economy and takes over as a temporary philosopher-king. The first thing Hussein does is to tax away one apple---philosopher or not, he needs to feed on more than ideas. His next move is to borrow a dollar from Adam. With the loan, Hussein buys Vladimir's "goods" and broadcasts them through his royal TV channel. As a result, Vladimir has a dollar to buy the leftover apple from Adam. Lucky Adam gets an opportunity to watch SpongeBob and Pokémon for "free."

Now that Hussein has successfully jumpstarted the economy, he has to stay on for life. There is an obvious need to for a benevolent planner to fine-tune the economy or it will go into another recession. Day after day, Hussein confiscates an apple, borrows a dollar, and creates a job for Vladimir. Royal spending subsidizes art, keeps Vladimir from starvation, and creates an incentive for Adam to keep producing his apples. On and on it goes until, and I don't know how long the long run is in this story, the day of reckoning arrives.

Can the reader guess the price of apples at the end of the experiment?