THE current president is, officially, trying to stimulate the American economy. One core approach in his program is to finance with Federal Funds “shovel ready projects.” This is understood to mean primarily infrastructure construction. And this means things like bridges.
Consider the nature of a bridge. Building or repairing it will engender some jobs, for a time. However, once the work is over, except for some maintenance, the job producing aspect is over. The bridge may well help the economic activity in the surrounding area, but the bridge itself if essentially a one time injection.
However, consider what would happen if the bridge were destroyed, after being built. The jobs involving its construction would be extended for at least twice as long. The materials, being bought and sold twice, would help the manufactures to hire additional workers. And this action would be increased, again and again, if the bridge were destroyed, over and over, after being (re)built.
Of course, such a policy is not going to be adopted. Destruction may help somewhat. However, the taxpayer is not going to support money spent primarily to break things. Or is he?
In essence what I have described is the current war policies being sustained by the administration. The bombs, once dropped, need to be replaced. This puts the bomb producers in a position to keep their workers working. And they need to re-buy raw materials. And this supports a chain of workers and producers. A worker in the defense industry is no less employed than a worker in the bridge industry. The key difference is that the defense industry repeats itself. In a sense, the same bomb needs to be dropped, over and over. The same bullets need to be made, transported, distributed, fired and replaced.
I am NOT, not even in jest, offering that federal projects are capable of supporting economic prosperity. There are basic reasons why this will not work. However, IF one is a supporter of this kind of program, THEN the very best can only be war(s). And the actions have the beneficial side effect of killing militant Islamists and intimidating enemies of civilization. Yet some of the strongest opponents of the military efforts are those who are most in favor of continued deficit spending on one-time projects.
Maybe they expect the bridges to keep falling down.
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