EXCERPTS:
"The great economic debate emerging in Washington—simple and a bit simplistic—goes like this: Should the U.S. government be spending more money to stimulate the sagging economy, or should it be saving money because of the giant budget deficit?
That's an important question, to be sure, but something has gone missing in the argument: What about economic growth, which could help stimulate the economy and fight the deficit at the same time?
This week, the Obama administration is trying to shift the discussion back to economic growth.
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That's where Mr. Obama is trying to take the discussion this week, administration aides say. The push started Saturday, when he devoted his weekly radio address to talking about $2 billion in Energy Department grants going to two solar-energy companies: a solar-power plant in Arizona and a Colorado plant making solar panels.
Spending money on the solar plants puts the president on the wrong side of the deficit-cutting impulse, but it also allowed him to talk about creating more than 5,000 jobs, at a time when overall job-creation numbers are frail. In the same vein, Mr. Obama this week will visit a Kansas City facility that makes electric delivery vehicles, with help from a $32 million grant from stimulus-bill funds.
Next, the White House will try to move on to expanding American exports, a theme that was big in Mr. Obama's State of the Union address this year but which has gotten lost in the shuffle in recent months. Mr. Obama will meet this week with a recently created "export council" of business leaders who are supposed to help find ways to expand American exports.
QUESTION:
In these examples of the administration's plans for encouraging economic growth, what is directing how resources will be used? The information contained in market prices about the goods and services that consumers value, and the response of profit-seeking businesses as they try to provide those consumer-desired goods and services? Or, government decisions about what goods and services should be produced, and then government actions to motivate businesses to produce those government-desired goods and services?
