Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Putting aside how [President] Elon Musk pays for it all, facepalm you can't compare the side effects of a massive government spending plan without looking at that! It'll all come out eventually. Either we borrow, and tax our future generations, or we tax more businesses now, which would also repress business activity and American competitiveness. There's a few items that could be solved with the market. Like: Remov…
>There's a few items that could be solved with the market. Like: Remove city's zoning laws with a federal mandate, to encourage the market to build urban housing. You don't need the gov. to do it, just remove the limitations. Disallow internet providers from offering kickbacks to condo/apartment managers to open up the market. We should probably tax semi trucks & cars with snow tires more, because they're the ones th…
> Or we invest in infrastructure and R&D now to make the profit later. You know, like every sane country in history prior to the Reagan Revolution.
But, do politicians ever get away from deficit spending? In order to follow the Keynes playbook you suggest, we need to take in a surplus eventually to pay off loans. And if we're taking this money from a larger economy the deficit spending has created, then Keynes' strategy also relies on the money being well spent. It's not enough to have employed people, they have to be projects that do help the economy and help wealth creation. Digging a hole & filling it up will not generate the profit we can skim in the future. And I question the ability of the government to spend money well.
In general though, it just becomes an engineering/finance problem. (And whenever we can turn an emotional political problem in a boring engineering/finance problem. that's a good thing.) I suspect that highway expansions are usually worth it. Subway and light rail are questionable. I agree that subways are really awesome to ride, but the true cost of subways are masked from the consumer. The $2.75/trip new yorkers pay is about 40% of the actual cost. https://tcf.org/content/commentary/in-defense-of-the-cheap-s... (I suspect that they're only looking at operating costs, not capital costs.)
> No, I wasn't proposing my ideal economic program. That would start with a lot more of Karl Marx and Henry George.
I know you weren't, I was just noticing a pattern in your thinking anyway. :) I'm pretty Austrian so..... yeah. TIL Henry George though, he seems like a cool guy: http://www.economist.com/blogs/freeexchange/2015/04/land-val... Anything to motivate cities to develop more is good in my book!