Maybe I'm ignorant: someone please enlighten me. Say I'm an ex-miner with no job for the last 5 years, living in Bumfuck, WV, and upside down in my little house. Now, Trump decides to build roads (for example). 1. Could this somehow provide me with a job? I have no experience building roads. I think they would hire the experienced people first. 2. Even if the answer to #1 were Yes, would I take the job? No one is going to build a road through my now-defunct mining town, so I would have to move myself to where the job is. So far, I have stayed in my house and voted for Trump, but I have not, in the last 5 years, pulled up stakes and moved to another place and gotten a different job.
Infrastructure, tariffs, min wage, war spending, subsidies, all just taking money out of one pocket and putting it in the other. So now we are just fighting over which pocket to put it in this time until innovation gets the ball rolling again in our direction. The government can't make jobs, but they certainly can stop making it hard for us to hire if the need should ever arise. Otherwise, coal miners have no difficulty building roads. They have been building under ground and above roads for centuries. What has changed is the departure from conservative economics straight to the worker who needs a job whether his depressed coal mining town needs one or not. We have had no problem building a road in Iraq because Halliburton needs a contract. I'm pretty sure if given a grant the local government could build and own their own mine, or road or hospital or school. Ownership is the key. Hired help is a thing of the past.
Trumps infrastructure plans so far is just a big tax cut for developers - which benefits his his family and himself. This is Trump showing his best side -Trump is a master of the long con, expect him to use his power to wipe out his massive loans from Germany and China and accelerate the transfer of wealth from the 99% to the 1% elite.
What infrastructure spending? I thought this was one of the campaign promises, which would seem to suggest that the probability of it actually occurring is rather minuscule. Also, as the other poster mentioned, the "plan" which has been proposed so far envisions very little actual govt spending and instead relies on corporate tax breaks and incentives. It's difficult to imagine why a corp would suddenly decide to hire ex-miners from WV, given they've refused to do so for the best part of a decade.
He gives big contracts to his company and other real estate companies to build schools, etc. The owners of those companies spend those profits in the US economy allowing that money to trickle down to the working class in the form of employment as butlers and maids for their estates. Seriously, I guarantee a lot of infrastructure work will be awarded by the government. There's no way he's not making $10 Billion in the next four years.
There are plenty of vacancies for unskilled labor, in road-building, as well as for those with experience. Some will; some won't. It was ever thus. Perhaps unfortunately - in a way - that apears to be true, too.
Tax breaks are great if you have large profits, and if you have large profits you don't really need a break. If you have no profit to pay tax on how will a tax break help you? You sure this government knows what it is doing? Oh well, somebody can always make money betting on a dog chasing it's tail. What has changed is we are going to skip all the crap this time and in 4 years somebody is going to have a job somehow. Damn the details, full speed ahead. We'll fix it in the mix.
Marty, come on now. The infrastructure spending is pretty small. It's 100 billion a year over 10 years. Shit, we practically already do that now overseas. I'm not sure I understand the controversy over this. Hell, I admit most this trivial bs goes over my head as most seem to enjoy shouting at the rain even in the middle of desert at high noon without a could in the sky.
BTW, where did roads come from? A lot of the infrastructure I heard was "tech infrastructure" as in providing broadband internet across the entire country. Also mass transit (badly needed). I don't think I have heard a single person mention "roads". I could be wrong.