Re: This Is Not The Time For Stimulus Spending
I'm not so sure about that, that is what investors do - invest. Let a company build a bridge, giving lots of private sector jobs and put tolls on the bridge to pay the investors back. But, the first part of my post mentioned localities paying for infrastructure instead of the federal government, something many localities already do now. You totally ignored what I said there.
Except that is not necessarily what investors do. What they do is place their money were it gets the best return, and that does not always coincide with social interest. This is particularly true when it comes to transportation systems, were national interests may vary wildly with possible profit return expectations. It is often the case that heavily used routes will be profitable, and so attract private interest, but less used ones, or those that are unproven or peripheral to financial gain will not.
National air carriers, for example, will often be mandated by government to serve smaller communities, ones which would be abandoned without such regulation. A bridge in a big metropolis may be a money maker, but others, which may be deemed essential to public interest, may not, and would also be rejected by business interests.
Also, your notion of employment and payback make no sense. A public project would also employ "lots" in the private sector, and those that use it would pay taxes, thereby returning public "investment" with the added bonus of not having also carry the profits of a private company, which again may or may not find socially useful destinations.
By devolving such projects to local government, you are not changing the equation, other than to make them less efficient and flexible. National oversight could set larger priorities, and also a sovereign entity with its own currency would have more leeway in expenditures, thereby achieving policy goals in a more thorough fashion.
Leaving these projects to the private sector would mean many, probably most, would never get done, and it would also abandon essential policy decisions to an unwilling and unable entity.
