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Quoted in a Pittsburgh Tribune Review story on Obama's stimulus initiatives
Link here
The overall economic effect of these plans is likely to be marginal, however, because advanced research and development jobs go to skilled workers, most of whom have college degrees, said Matthew Rousu, associate professor of economics at Susquehanna University. It suffers from some of the same weaknesses as the 2009 stimulus act, which pumped billions into environmentally friendly technology research, supporting jobs for workers whose skills and training already were in demand, he said.
“If you're looking at a jobs program, a far better program would simply be to spend a lot of federal money to fix Pennsylvania's bridges, for example,” Rousu said. “People working on bridges have a much higher unemployment rate than, say, the scientists who are more likely to obtain research and development jobs.”
The intentions of many of these projects are grand. But theirs always been the smell of corruption and incompetence and politics involved whenever their spublic money used to build something. I like old model that was used to regulate utilities years back.. Privative bridges but keep a tight hand on the private company that owns the bridge...
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