Flame — HabitableZone

Flame » in reply to You nailed it.

The gift that keeps on giving.
ER — (archived)

When you give a local government money to build something, like a road or bridge, local companies get the contract, local workers are employed,
and local suppliers get the orders, and most of the money gets spent right here in the USA. Every time a sandhog buys an RC Cola and a Moon Pie from the Roach Coach it doesn't get invested in the stock market, or stashed in a bank in the Caribbean, or poured into some welfare bureaucracy. A local businessman makes the sale. The road or bridge alleviates traffic congestion and allows goods to be shipped more efficiently, and continues to generate even more wealth, not to mention tax revenue. And it was a road or bridge that probably had to be built anyway, sooner or later, no matter what the economy was doing.

There's a lot to be said for pork, and in this case (I know, because I do this work for local government in South Florida) it isn't going to be used to build a bridge to nowhere or a special favor for some constituency. The Obamabucks will go to local Metropolitan Planning Organizations and State Road Departments that already have a huge list of projects approved and on the books waiting for funding. They have to, its the law, no earmarks here. These will be funded first because these are high priority jobs that need to be built, that have been identified for years, that were going to be built anyway if and when money became available. That's what is meant by "shovel-ready". Most of them would have to be refunded anyway if delayed because construction costs go up the longer you put off a project, due to inflation and other reasons.

If you're going for the pork, make it a real barbecue, give it to a working man and his boss, not some blow-dried wimp banker on Wall Street, or some company exec so he can send someone else's job to Asia. That way we get to drive on that road or cross that bridge someday too.

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