Saturday, July 18, 2009

"Shovel-Ready", Eh?

Here's the quote:

“This is the most shovel-ready rail project in the Midwest,” he said. “Maybe even in the United States.” --James Doyle, Governor of Wisconsin.

So how "shovel-ready" is it?

If stimulus money covers the Milwaukee-to-Madison line, Doyle said, construction could start in four years

Oh.

5 comments:

Shoebox said...

Yes, I heard a dem pundit on O'Reilly yesterday defend the stiumulus package by saying that only 10% had been spent because cities, states etc. were still preparing projects to use the money on....doesn't sound ready for a shovel or any other implement yet that's how it was supposed to put everyone to work!

Anonymous said...

I've got a few shovel-ready projects. How about they cancel the rest of the "Stimulus" and just give the money directly to the taxpayers?

I know, stop laughing, it makes far too much sense and doesn't give the DC ruling class any power over us. (sigh)

neomom

J. Strupp said...

The previous administration tried that in the spring of 2008 remember? As expected, the money was mostly saved and the impact on GDP growth was minimal and short lived.

I'm going to try and make this as clear as possible. We are suffering from a collapse in aggregate demand. Giving money back to private enterprise and/or the American taxpayer in the form of tax rebate checks will do little good. Your employer is NOT going to put that new addition on his factory because the government gave him a tax cut people. HE HAS NO BUSINESS and will continue to hoard cash because of the real possibility that he will have no business for the forseeable future. Joe the plumber isn't going to go out and spend that rebate check on a new TV when he's behind on his mortgage, 2008 taxes and is worried about losing his job. He's going to save it.

The tax cut does not solve this problem no matter how loud the GOP shouts.

Beer, Bicycles and the VRWC said...

OK Strupp: Then how does government spending fix the problem? It creates no demand and no long-term private sector jobs. It only creates a larger life-sucking, tax-hungry bureaucracy. How is that going to help?

Dad29 said...

Good question, Deek!

We can all see, clearly!!!, how borrowing umpty-zillion dollars will stimulate aggregate demand!!

Can't you see it?

No different from Robert Preston's "THINK" method of playing band music!!

Just Be LIEVE, brother!!