Economics, politics

[hudebnik]

See this NY Times article about the effects zero-interest borrowing is actually having on the US economy.

Posted via m.livejournal.com.

Comments

[hudebnik.livejournal.com]

what would you have these folks DO for their work?

There's plenty of construction to be done -- roads, bridges, mass transit, high-speed railways, fuel-efficient housing and school buildings.... And you could hire a bunch of public librarians and K-12 teachers (or, more likely, give the states a pile of money earmarked for hiring public librarians and K-12 teachers, whom they are currently laying off).

These are all "public goods" from which everybody benefits, but no one person benefits enough to pay for them.

If a private company derives most of the benefit from a particular project, and that company has money, that project will probably be done without government involvement. But if the benefit of a project is inherently broadly distributed, the "tragedy of the commons" tells us it won't happen without public funding.