$30B IT Stimulus Will Create Almost 1 Million Jobs

itif writes "This report takes a look at how many jobs you get if you invest $10 billion each in three different IT infrastructure projects — broadband, health IT and the smart grid. It argues that if you are going to be spending billions on a stimulus package, investing in 'digital infrastructure' creates more jobs than physical infrastructure (e.g. roads and bridges) in the short-term, and you get a whole host of other benefits in the long-term."

Comments

Re:Ronald Regan is on the phone...

[homer_s]

Someone who makes $120k is not spending 100% of their paycheck- not even close. They're putting a fair amount into long and short term savings. which ends up.....back in the economy helping people build new factories, invest in companies, etc.
Since you seem to have strong opinions about economics and tax policy, would you mind telling us what economic training, if any, you have?

Re:Bad economics

[sexconker]

Wantonly using the phrase "the human condition" a dozen times doesn't make you sound smart. It makes you sound dumb.

Re:Good for employment, bad for productivity.

[Curunir_wolf]

So if government is so good, what happened in the U.S.S.R and North Korea? Guess what the most efficient method of allocating scarce resources is? Go ahead, guess. You're wrong, because you think some corrupt bureaucrat in Washington can do it.

I hear this all the time. "The government built the highway system, and it works great!" That's the bullshit meme that needs to die. The feds took boom-time taxes and allocated it through a federalized system of road planning. Most of the actual work was done by private contractors organized by state engineers.

What other great, efficient, wonderful things have the government given us with their confiscated money?

• Farms? Nope, they've just made a bunch of fat-cat farming conglomerates (that know how to work the loopholes) even richer while shutting our poor foreign competition.
• Trips to the moon? Okay, that worked. What did we get out of that again? Tang?
• Military? Well, yea, that's the one thing they really should be support - national defense and all. Of course I wouldn't call that "efficient", and it's been misused by building a global empire that makes other countries dependent and resentful.
• The Internet? Yea, government funded. Of course, it was a really small research sharing tool until the CIX enabled a lot of private investment. But at least it got a start as a government project.
• Health care? Well, they do provide some to some people, although "efficient" is the wrong word to describe a system that wastes almost 40% of its funding on fraud.
• Emergency management? Been to New Orleans lately?
• Drug prohibition? $140 billion a year does what?

This is getting kind of tiresome. Been to the grocery store lately? All that stuff, priced within reach, and millions of them close to pretty much everywhere anybody lives. Pretty impressive. The only thing government does there is increase prices and reduce choices through taxation and regulation.

Hey libertarians! STFU!

[greg_barton]

We tried your way.

The economy crashed and burned.

And, no, it didn't fail because of too much regulation. Please.

STFU and get out of the way.