re: #1 garhighway

I’m not sure I get your point. Building public infrastructure has been part of stimulus activity since the WPA. I’m not sure there has been a point in time in the last 100 years when local governments were, in the aggregate, fully funded for such work. So the idea that we would fund such work as stimulus does not strike me as novel or startling.

The problem with it, though, is that anything other than routine resurfacing and the like has such long lead times for design, engineering and ROW acquisition that it makes lousy short-term stimulus.

Thank you for your comments.

REGARDING: I’m not sure there has been a point in time in the last 100 years when local governments were, in the aggregate, fully funded for such work.

RESPONSE: If your assumption is correct, i.e., that these functions are not in the course of ordinary governmental activities, if our economics were adequate these roads and bridges would just collapse and die, since if the only time we would resort to fixing and building would be for the sake of stimulating our economy.

That appears to be a very strange theory.

Just because we are awake may not guaranty that our thought processes are adequate.

Thanks, again,

mz