Roads, Bridges and Schools for What?

First, open this link and check out the way cool flash map the Department Of Transportation made for you. It shows the growth of the Interstate Highway System from 1950 to the present. Find an underserved spot in the US that needs new highways. Next, our incoming Secretary of Education used to run the Chicago School District. His budget went up by 41% over a 5 year period for a total of $1.7B more per year. Per year. With $1.7B, how many schools could he build each year on his own?

Finally, consider that the $1T stimulus bill will cost each one of us $3,000. A family of four will have to pay $12,000 to stimulate things by building roads, bridges and schools.

What is your family buying for $12,000? Where are you going to get that money?

Update: Mish has a darkly funny pair of posts on what he calls Fiscal Insanity Virus (FIV). He claims to have discovered two strains, the Keynes (K) strain and the Monetarist (M) strain. He rebuts them thusly.

• The average 8th grader understands that one cannot continually spend more money than he has.


• The average homeowner who has been foreclosed on understands that buying more house than he could afford vs. wages earned was a very bad idea.


• The average economics professor afflicted with the K-Virus thinks that it is possible to spend one's way out of a fiscal crisis.


• The average economics professor afflicted with the M-Virus thinks that it is possible to inflate one's way out of a fiscal crisis by destroying the currency.


• The average congressional representative believes in the free lunch theory of spending many multiples of what is collected in taxes.

Why is it that the average 8th grader has a better grasp of economics and fiscal sanity than the average economist and the average member of Congress?