A California Republican

Spending money on public works brought the USA out of the Great Depression (and the war helped as well). But would it work today?

The economy has become a lot more diversified since then. There are a lot of people out of work who don’t have the qualifications to work in public works areas. In fact, the US economy has become service oriented - which means that spending money on public works to end the recession might be a red herring. Actually, it probably is a red herring.

Today, the process for spending that money is so much more complex. You have to get environmental impact reports, go through all sorts of requirements, then bid, and then build. Any money designated to be spend probably wouldn’t get spent for at least 2 years - which is when we’d be coming out of the recesison anyways.

So why are people touting it as an option? Why is the Governor of California touting it as an option?

Well, California is an odd duck. We have a ton of bond money left from voter-approved bonds from the past 3 elections. Those bonds haven’t been sold yet. Assuming they can get sold (and that is by no means a good assumption, read here for more bond sales troubles). And that means that California simply goes into more debt. What a great idea. It is akin to someone charging up all their credit cards when they know they don’t have a job to pay it off.

So like I said before- this isn’t the best idea.

Maybe a better idea would be to incentivise businesses to hire people. The Democrats would scream. They don’t want to help out businesses - that’s  a Republican lobby. But let’s not forget that in order for a state (or country) to come out of a recession, people need jobs. And like it or not - business are who does the hiring.