$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

Or...

[smooth wombat]

You could give each citizen $1 million and let things take their course. That would cost you roughly $350 million compared to the $1.5 trillion that has already been spent and the proposed $1 trillion the incoming administration wants to spend.

I know, it's a simple solution with a fairly inexpensive price tag which means no elected official will ever consider it.

Re:Or...

[Anonymous Coward]

No, he doesn't mean anything. He's just another parroting fucktard, repeating some stupid-ass email he got from someone who used the British definition of billion = million million, rather than a thousand million.

Still, at least *this* parroting fucktard didn't invade Iraq.

Re:brokenwindowfallacy???

[4D6963]

Please step over there with the rest of the angry libertarian ideologues. "OMG you take my money and build an inner city school/hospital with it, you bastards! Whaaa, whaa!!". I mean seriously, what the fuck is it you want, to be given a list of all the things the government needs money for and tick what you agree to pay for? Also, if you could do that and decided not to pay for road maintenance, but still used roads, would that make you the last of greedy selfish bastards?

Re:brokenwindowfallacy???

[Trailer Trash]

Here we invest into an infrastructure

Yes, you invest with other people's money. Money they would have invested had it not been taxed away from them.

Hello, broken window...

Re:brokenwindowfallacy???

[Crudely_Indecent]

Here we invest into an infrastructure, to end up with something better

You're assuming that the government will invest in a project that will:

• Be successful
  • Are there any government programs that aren't money-sucking failures...name one
• Be available
  • Will broadband infrastructure be made afailable to the taxpayer? doubtful! They'll hand it off to their ISP buddies who championed the project and those guys will build their business on our dime and charge us for it. Then they'll probably offshore maintenance.
• Be economical
  • Investment indicates that there will be some form of return on the investment. How do we (the people) get paid back for this?
• Be prudent
  • Last I checked, we're in a recession and we just bailed-out a bunch of banks, and auto manufacturers with money we printed out of thin air. Is it really the time to be printing more money and helping yet another industry at the expense of the people?

Something better? I doubt that! I would be willing to believe that this is an attempt to spend money on infrastructure that is more easily monitored by big-brother while greasing the pockets of long-time political supporters and fleecing the American people.

How many trillion dollars have been spent on bail-outs? (depends on who you ask, just look at the national debt clock) What is that going to do to the value of the dollar?

Re:Bad economics

[OeLeWaPpErKe]

Euhm this is called "broken windows fallacy" and it's not a point of contention amongst serious economists : a $30B stimulus package will COST jobs. It will not gain them. No amount of money spending by the government, whether by taxing people or by printing money will help, it will fail. (another thing the government is doing is printing money, and Obama's gonna have to order new printing presses. I'm looking forward to paying a snack with a $1000 note).

You want to have the maximum number of Americans working and increase economic activity ? Lower the minimum wage. Level the playing field between legal and illegal labour.