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$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."
Who tagged it brokenwindowfallacy? It's no broken window fallacy. In the broken fallacy nothing is gained from breaking the window and replacing it. Here we invest into an infrastructure, to end up with something better you can make better business with. It's called an investment.
You just got troll'd!
Not exactly. Borrowing for the wrong reasons is what got us into this mess. Borrowing for the right reasons (increase future earning potential) can more than offset the debt, leaving you with an income large enough to both pay back what you owe and have more to live on than you ever would have without that initial debt. It happens all the time at an individual and corporate level, this is just expanding it to the entire country. The key is having the discipline to pay back the debt once the increased earnings are realized, which so far very few incarnations of government have had the discipline to do.
Slashdot needs a "-1, Wrong" moderation option.
The Urban Hippie
It might. It might not. It particularly might not when, as is the case right now, deflation occurs, as $1 tomorrow becomes worth more than $1 today, so it makes perfect sense from the perspective of each individual spender to hold cash and defer spending, since cash then has a positive real rate of return.
Not only does hoarding result in money sitting idle, right now there is money outright being destroyed as banks just don't extend credit at all (at least, not in the quantities they have until recently), while they continue to accept deposits and payments on existing debt. Its not like the actual money supply is some fixed number based on the number of pieces of paper currency printed and in circulation; most money exists entirely as notations of account, and while reserve limits and similar regulations limit the amount of some forms of money that can be created, there is nothing that keeps the money supply constant.
Even if this was true (which it is not, even if you refer to the world economy when you say "the economy"), that could still create jobs in as not all spending is equally effective at job creation. This is especially the case if you talk about creating jobs in the US economy, since the economy from which the US government takes money to spend when it borrows money is not exclusively the US economy.
No, it reallocates money. Whether or not it creates more jobs than would otherwise be the case depends on how efficient the use it puts money to is at creating jobs as compared to the uses to which the money would otherwise have been put. This is also true (and even more relevant) if you add "in the US" after each instance of "jobs" in the previous sentence.
Just once, I've love to hear a die-hard libertarian explain how privatized roads would work. Just once.
They work quite well and in France of all places (hardly a Libertarian paradise). There are 1,00,960 km of roads in France and unlike many other countries, most of them are toll and operated by private companies such as Société des Autoroutes de Paris Normandie (SAPN). Now, before you respond, "Well, nobody drives in France" it is important to realize that France is among the most car dependent countries in Europe with 937 billion vehicle kilometers travelled in 2005 (85% by car). Despite this extensive private road network the public transport in France, as in many other developed EU states, is excellent (particularly by American standards) with high speed rail service, trams, and light railways providing extensive connections.
Now obviously it is not practical to privatize every last minor road and many forms of public transportation, street cars and buses for example, share the same local road networks as private vehicles. However, the example in France demonstrates that a quality network of highways and even regional roads can be maintained quite well by private enterprise. Indeed, that is more equitable. Why should people who never use the Highways pay for them? If they only take the bus and use trains or airplanes for longer trips then why should they pay for highways with their taxes?
The problem comes when people on both sides try to paint the issue of public vs private roads as an all or nothing proposition without acknowledging that a balance of the two is really what yields the best results.
"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."
And??? You think the money just disappears at that point? Or is it used to buy stocks and bonds, and taken by banks and invested in loans and other financial instruments?
That money goes into "the economy" too.
Any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creed into law if it acquires the political power to do so.
The problems we are having are in general a result of deregulation. For example conflicts of interest between the buy side and the sell side of a brokerage. Or conflicts of interest between the investment banking arm of a bank and the traditional arm. Or conflicts of interest between stockholders and bondholders, or executives and boards of directors.
That is precisely the kinds of problems that government "getting in the way" is good at fixing.