Trump’s $1-trillion infrastructure spending plan continues to be one of his less controversial proposed policies. In Washington, and even among many in the general public, there is a consensus that government spending on more roads and bridges is always necessarily a slam dunk.
This is stated matter-of-factly in a recent CNN article about the president’s plan:
Infrastructure spending is a proven winner for the economy: It creates jobs, fuels growth and allows Americans to get from point A to B faster, making them more productive.
This statement is not a quotation from any supporter of the the plan. The author of the article is simply stating what he believes to be an indisputable fact.
The fact that statements like this are made in such a blasé way should not surprise us.
This attitude goes back at least to the early nineteenth century when it was assumed that government infrastructure programs were all necessarily “proven winners” for the metaphorical construct known as “the economy.”
200 Years of Boondoggles
Perhaps the most famous example of this is the transcontinental railroad which is still held up as the great “proof” that massive infrastructure projects are indisputably net gains for the nation.
In reality, the transcontinentals were never “proven winners” and were actually huge engines of debt and corruption in nineteenth century America. They siphoned off vast amounts of wealth from other uses where money would have been better spent.
Even worse, the railroads — like all infrastructure — required constant upkeep. Thus, the creation of new infrastructure was really a creation of future government commitments for more government spending.
Read the full article at mises.org.
10:20 am on June 22, 2017
