Saw this article at the Wall Street Journal site:Let's Spend on Broadband and the Power Grid
Not all stimulus is created equal
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123180687062275609.html
I liked this bit within the story:
“Smarter infrastructure is by far our best path to creating new jobs and stimulating growth. We at IBM were asked to map this out by President-elect Barack Obama's transition team, and our research shows that a $30 billion stimulus investment in just three areas -- smart grids, health-care IT and broadband -- could yield almost one million new jobs within one year. That's possible because these kinds of infrastructure have significantly greater economic and societal multiplier effects than traditional infrastructure like bridges and highways.”
It’ll be interesting to see if the Obama administration follows up on these recommendations. I also wonder what other industries have been approached by the transition team. I will admit to having a fair amount of surprise over the fact that someone – a Democrat, even – is actually trying to figure out how best to spend all the money that’s going to be thrown at the economy over the next couple of years. All of the quotes from Pelosi and Reid haven’t exactly inspired confidence.
I forget who it was (apart from Ayn Rand fifty years ago) that pointed out at the beginning of the bailouts that if the government was serious about getting the cash back into the economy to stimulate spending, they shouldn’t give it to the banks and Wall Street assholes that lost it in the first place, but rather, suspend all taxes for two months. And isn’t that a sobering thought? We apparently pay $350 billion in taxes every month. Just to break that down, that means that every day, every single person in the country pays $40 in taxes to various levels of government. And then they have the nerve to ask for more on April 15.
I need to learn how to touch-type if there’s going to be an electronic infrastructure boom. At the very least I could blog faster.
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