re: #2 mikiesmoky2

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.

There’s a difference between “funded enough to keep things going” (the usual state of affairs) and “fully funded” (allocated enough money to do every project that a state or town wants to do.) Road and bridge funds as stimulus exist in the gap between those two sums.

If your town would like to build a bypass around the business district but can’t afford it, that’s the kind of project that is useful for stimulus application. (Leaving aside the issues I raised in my first post.)

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