That would be the same Robert Reich who once proposed indexing the minimum wage to inflation?

We don't need the studies Reich proposes to figure out if government "investing" works. They've been done many times, from many places, over many years. I've posted many of them in places like this.

Almost everything the government "invests" in is a money-losing operation. If you think about it, if something actually was a good investment instead of a politically-motivated load of pork, you wouldn't need to force taxpayers to pump cash into it. The sole criteria for government "investment" from a politician's point of view is not "will this make money?" It's "will this get me power?" Government "investment" is money pumped to political allies, lobbyists, unions, and corporate cronies. The financial returns, from a political point of view, are irrelevant.

The idiots here in California are ready to pump billions into a high-speed rail system that will fatten union coffers (and therefore Democratic ones), and - I guarantee it - lose money for decades in operation. I just had a discussion with someone at the local paper about yet another subsidy for our local commuter train system, which has been in a "fiscal emergency" for as long as I can remember.

Meanwhile, private industries that actually DO make a great deal of money, and pay taxes instead of use them up, are attacked, denigrated, and looted.