imo, I think a term like infrastructure spending is a good example that has been outdated and misleading for long time to the public/people - general voters. And that is exactly why we really need to develop an updated course for every individual voters. Mainly due to a government cannot produce/have any profit (or loss) for its operations, the operating performance is called income and expenditure statement, instead of a profit and loss statement. There are hence so many unresolved problematic issues for the government operations and performance. 1. They spend all the available money available for them to spend, as long as they have the money approved by last year's budget statement. They don't want to keep any savings at all, in order to maintain a balance budget. LOL If they are showed with any unspent huge money left, they are evaluated under-performed. Their budget last round/year was overestimated - incapability. Their future budge for next round/year will be naturally cut, causing they not having enough money for many things planning to do. As the unspent money current year may be because a significant delay of critically important activities, perhaps due to weather or else. How do we know their proposed estimating budget next round or the following rounds would be right/correct, statistically? Just found something here to save my typing:
Why would people in a smart country accept a public policy about stimulating investment in research infrastructure? A government's lack of that would make the country, being currently the best and strongest basically in every individual advanced technologies, possibly undermining one huge aspect significantly - such as combating AGW! Just similar to Moon landing, or Outer Space searching, historically!
Well Said. It's akin to the broken window fallacy. To a bureaucrat, they think if they break a perfectly good window it will stimulate demand now to fix it when it reality all they are doing is distorting the market for those resources. I would say though that by fixing up the inner cities it would bring much needed added supply of rental housing and lower overall rents in the city. The rundown parts of large cities are distorting prices in the nicer areas that are becoming too dense forcing laborers to have large commute times by living in far out places that are more affordable. This commute time does have an effect on labor productivity and the allocation of labor in general.
imo: it looks like there has been a stagnation of domestic economy in the US as its current ongoing trend has been trying to protect the farming and energy industries, as usual, hence getting voters support from the states generating incomes from these industries.