$250,000 per Job? Only a little bit too expensive.

[howardtayler]

If you've been following the news, there are lots of people screaming about how incredibly expensive the stimulus package was, and how it didn't create enough jobs for the money spent

Comments

[anshackles]

When they announced the first such package here in the UK, the sum being mentioned was about GBP1000 per person, roughly speaking. This was to be given to the banks, I think, to stimulate the banker's bonuses economy with, by lending more cash

[petronivs]

GW Bush tried that here, with his tax cuts. Unfortunately, it wasn't that well received. Therefore, Obama evidently one-upped him by giving money solely to The People The Government Likes.

[johnridley]

Tax cuts don't directly help the people who really need help the most, because they're not paying taxes in the first place. I have family members who never saw a dime, and years later are still destitute and barely able to feed themselves.

[galadrion]

However, tax cuts are also the only honest way the government has of reducing its burden on the economy - any other form of government "largess" is simply taking money from one citizen-subject in order to give it to another... and incidentally keep a hefty chunk of it for the government's own purposes.

It has been said - and proven - many, many times before: government does not create wealth. It can only redistribute it. And it can't even do that efficiently.

[galadrion]

The government is not creating the wealth which the road represents; it is redirecting it - by taking the wealth represented by taxes. (The same can be said of the private company, although it usually isn't using taxes to finance the project.) Governments do not create wealth. That is not their function. Nor should it be.

[randallsquared]

Surely you're not seriously suggesting that we can tell for certain whether a particular road represents net wealth (after accounting for where that money would otherwise have gone)? Was the "Bridge to nowhere" a net creation of wealth? Probably not. Interstate 95? Probably so.

However, it does seems like a sound principle that if you have to take money by force to fund something, it's probably not worth the investment. If it was worth it, people would be volunteering their money for the return it would give.

[howardtayler]

Roads don't create wealth, no. They enable wealth, but they don't create it.

The tech from the moon landing didn't create wealth, either. It was pure research, which was then turned into wealth by private enterprise.

Pure research and infrastructure are great things for government to invest in, and are good expenditures of stimulus, but they don't create wealth. They redistribute income, and in some cases enable private enterprise to create wealth.

[randallsquared]

"So you're saying all the tech that came from the moon landing and the rest of the space program was useless [...]"

No, I wasn't saying that, and since I pretty explicitly said so with respect to roads, I guess I'm being trolled. :)

About the space program specifically, though, I would say that there's a good argument to be made that going to the moon was far less useful than the wealth that was used to fund it. Greg Burch, among others, has suggested that the technologically natural time to go to the moon (absent nuclear pulse engines, which I blame Kennedy for killing) might have been fifty years later. In the meantime, the government monopolization of space and the active discouragement of private space activities by NASA up through the 1990s very likely mean that we're behind where we'd otherwise be now.

All of this is suspect, of course, because we don't get to run controlled experiments on history.

[randallsquared]

Orion was indeed what I was talking about. It's basically the only way to have a major off-world presence with 1960s-era technology. Chemical rockets just won't cut it when you need to lift 100K people a year. :)

Anyway, I'm not sure anyone here would say that "government can't create wealth". Personally, all I'm saying is that government *doesn't* create net wealth, in the vast majority of situations. Most government activity is either wealth destruction or rent-seeking.

[anshackles]

you need the space elevator. Which is getting nearer, they can now produce a material strong enough, all they need now is to produce about a million tons of it.

that or a catapult - use ground based launchers, probably on a maglev track, to acquire most of the escape velocity.

that's just not true

[samholden]

Tax cuts don't reduce the government's burden on the economy when they fund the difference with borrowings. I'd go as far to say they increase the burden on the economy, because borrowing money has far fewer voter consequences in the short term.

Sure tax cuts coupled with spending cuts, but when is the last time that happened?

[uplinktruck]

What Galadrion said.