Last Friday, the Senate approved the Coburn Amendment to the Stimulpalooza which states in part
None of the amounts appropriated or otherwise made available by this Act may be used for any casino or other gambling establishment, aquarium, zoo, golf course, swimming pool, stadium, community park, museum, theater, art center, and highway beautification project.
Wise thinking. Gigantic deficit spending should only go to things that are needed, not just that which is wanted.
However, this guy has other ideas
For the purpose of a Keynesian stimulus it doesn’t matter if it’s spent on a park or a highway beautification project. Any spending is better than tax cuts, you could pay people to dig holes and fill them up again and that would be superior to tax cuts. Spending on parks or museums would also be better than military spending, which most of these fools have no problem with, because military spending tends to be very inefficient at creating jobs.
Ian Welsh – FireDogLake blogger
Welsh does to economic theory what cavitation does to a truck engine.
While his arguments on what a park/museum/theater bring a a community are correct, this so-called “stimulus” is supposed to be timely. Building any one of the above mentioned items is not timely.
If the community leaders want to bring those benefits to their jurisdiction then they need to make the case to the locals and tax them appropriately to get it built. If they need a bypass/overpass/offramp/onramp, that can be done. Otherwise, the local jokers are going to have to do their own deficit spending for the item.
And his idea that military spending doesn’t create obs is ludicris. I seem to remember a huge local stink made by the Boeing Machinists Union over the loss of a contract to build refuleing tankers. I guess they were lying to us about how much money that would bring to the region.
I also remember a newstory about layoffs at the Federal Cartridge Company’s plant not too long ago. I guess ammo must be free or something.
The left spend most of 2004-2007 whining about a lack of armor on Humvees and other assorted military vehicles. I guess the people making the steel plating and the people who install it on are working free to show their patriotism.
Do they really forget that easily or are they just stupid?
I’d put my money on stupid!!!!!
Merle
Oh yeh, like I’m gonna rush out and buy tickets to a whipped-up community theater-in-the-park staging of “Guys and Dolls” – NOT!