From: frazier@kona.cs.ucla.edu (Gregory Frazier)
Newsgroups: alt.activism,talk.politics.drugs
Subject: Re: YYYEEEEESSSSSSS!!!
Date: 13 Nov 92 19:34:41 GMT
Organization: UCLA, Computer Science Department
X-Newsreader: Tin 1.1 PL5

Jim Howe (jwh@citi.umich.edu) wrote:
: In article <1992Nov12.205226.22312@vexcel.com>, dean@vexcel.com (Dean Alaska) writes:
: |>
: |> Two comments on this.  If intelligent investments are made in a variety
: |> of infrastructure, then the efficiency of production will increase
: |> and productivity along with it and this leads to more jobs than just
: |> those directly involved with the government spending.  
: 
: What makes government employees any better judge of what makes a good
: investment than someon in the private sector.  A person in the private
: sector has a real incentive to invest in something that will yield a
: real return.

A person in the private sector only has the incentive to invest in
that which will directly benefit himself.  A bridge costs gazillions
of dollars, and will benefit no indivicual by nearly that amount.
Infrastructure construction and maintenance is clearly (to me, at
least), a responsibility of gov't, and one that has been neglected
for too many years.  I'd much rather see our highway system, railroads,
sewage treatment, etc., maintained that see welfare distributed,
and if the people the gov't hires to maintain this stuff are people
who would have otherwise been on welfare, so much the better.  Then
again, all that stuff *could* be privatized - but it isn't, and isn't
likely to be in the next four yrs.

: Government's only legitimate
: purpose is to protect the rights of *all* its citizens.  It does not
: exist to 'optimize' the allocation of goods and services.

Gov't does what the people tell it to do.  If we want better roads,
we'll get better roads.

: I believe if you do some investigating, you will find that speculation
: is an economically beneficial activity.  It is also ironic that you
: should mention lessened job creation in reference to the 80's.  The
: 80's were a period of tremendous job creation.  18 million new jobs
: is nothing to sneeze at (and they weren't mostly low paying either).

Interesting - I've heard that they were almost all low paying jobs.

: |> So the question is, which lowers job creation intensity (jobs/$ invested)
: |> more, government pork, or nonproductive private investment?
: 
: The real question is, who owns the money which will be invested.  I don't
: believe it is the business of government to take money simply because
: it *might* (but probably won't) invest it more 'wisely' than the private
: individual.

Well, these are both interesting questions, but fairly irrelevent.
Nobody is talking about stopping speculative investment, and we
all know "wisely" depends very much on the eye of the beholder.
Hopefully, infrastructure "investment" will only be undertaken if
there is some assurance of positive returns.  Sounds unlikely, but
I'm hopeful anyway.

--
"They thought to use and shame me but I win out by nature, because a true
freak cannot be made.  A true freak must be born." - Geek Love

Greg Frazier	frazier@CS.UCLA.EDU	!{ucbvax,rutgers}!ucla-cs!frazier
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