Quote of the Day: Government Infrastructure Spending

From Professor Tibor R Machan

There is no substitute for the planning done in the market place or at the local level where those doing the planning have at least a reasonable chance of knowing what is likely to be needed and when. The saying “all politics is local” should be supplemented with “all economics is local.” By that insight the best thing to do is not to extort funds from citizens and move them through the bureaucracy--where much of those funds is lost--but to leave them with the citizenry who have a reasonably good idea what needs to be done with it. And a huge side benefit of this is that those citizens have a better grasp on budgetary constraints than do politicians and bureaucrats who routinely forget about the source of the funds they spend and are subject to the dynamics of public choice, self-dealing and similar malfeasance that afflicts the public sector’s administrators.

For my money trying to figure out what is the best way to spend stimulus funds is akin to trying to figure out how best to spend loot gotten in a bank heist. There is simply no way to calculate such a thing. Stolen or extorted funds cannot be correctly, properly or rationally allocated. Recall, also, that when major infra-structure projects, such as highway systems or dams are built, not long after it priorities can change, such as when environmental concerns had develop and these huge projects turned out to become threats to endangered species or the wilds that some want desperately to preserve. But once the huge projects are there, it is very tough to change course--the damage may well have been done forever.