$10,000 each for those stupid "American Reinvestment and Recovery Act" signs?

[Silver Rocket Bitches!]

As the midterm election season approaches, new road signs are popping up everywhere – millions of dollars worth of signs touting "The American Reinvestment and Recovery Act" and reminding passers-by that the program is "Putting America Back to Work."
A look at where the stimulus money is going.

On the road leading to Dulles Airport outside Washington, DC there's a 10' x 11' road sign touting a runway improvement project funded by the federal stimulus. The project cost nearly $15 million and has created 17 jobs, according to recovery.gov.

However, there's another number that caught the eye of ABC News: $10,000. That's how much money the Washington Airports Authority tells ABC News it spent to make and install the sign – a single sign – announcing that the project is "Funded by The American Reinvestment and Recovery Act" and is "Putting America Back to Work." The money for the sign was taken out of the budget for the runway improvement project.

ABC News has reached out to a number of states about spending on stimulus signs and learned the state of Illinois has spent $650,000 on about 950 signs and Pennsylvania has spent $157,000 on 70 signs. Other states, like Virginia, Vermont, and Arizona do not sanction any signs.

http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/signs-stimulus/story?id=11163180

[Phoenix]

Two of those things went up locally...and I knew they cost a lot...but not that much.

Total insanity. Or is it deliberate?

[madfranks]

On the road leading to Dulles Airport outside Washington, DC there's a 10' x 11' road sign touting a runway improvement project funded by the federal stimulus. The project cost nearly $15 million and has created 17 jobs, according to recovery.gov.

The government can not "create jobs", all it can do is redistribute capital and resources from one group to another. Besides the outrageous claim of 17 jobs "created" to the tune of about $1 million each, every time the gov't takes money (through taxes or inflation) from the private sector, after all the bureaucrats, regulators, managers, etc. take their cuts, the amount of real wealth created is far less than what would have been created in the private sector. We will never see what that $15 million would have built/created in the free market because it was taken from them to improve a runway instead. And since the people do not see what will never be built from the stolen $15 million, they champion the great hand of the State, creating jobs and putting people to work!

[Silver Rocket Bitches!]

On the road leading to Dulles Airport outside Washington, DC there's a 10' x 11' road sign touting a runway improvement project funded by the federal stimulus. The project cost nearly $15 million and has created 17 jobs, according to recovery.gov.

The government can not "create jobs", all it can do is redistribute capital and resources from one group to another. Besides the outrageous claim of 17 jobs "created" to the tune of about $1 million each, every time the gov't takes money (through taxes or inflation) from the private sector, after all the bureaucrats, regulators, managers, etc. take their cuts, the amount of real wealth created is far less than what would have been created in the private sector. We will never see what that $15 million would have built/created in the free market because it was taken from them to improve a runway instead. And since the people do not see what will never be built from the stolen $15 million, they champion the great hand of the State, creating jobs and putting people to work!


Well put.

Reminds me of a chapter from The Alpha Strategy:



The Misallocation of Capital

Resources are limited and change is costly. These facts go a long way toward explaining why the
growth of government is destructive as well as so hard to contain.
When you create a product and exchange it for money, you assume control of how that money will be
spent. You will spend it according to your values, trading it for the things you value the most at that
moment. If you earn $100 by baking bread and choose to spend it on a suit, the tailor will benefit. he will
make a profit and that profit will encourage him to invest more capital in training and equipment to enable
him to make more suits. Your spending encourages capital investment in the production of things you value.

Suppose the government hits you with a $100 tax. They now have your money, and you can no longer
buy the suit. The government chooses to spend the money on a sign for the subway system in Washington,
D.C. Now, the businessman who makes those signs for the government is encouraged to expand his capital
investment, just as the tailor would have. The government has reallocated capital. Instead of your money
encouraging the production of goods you value most, it now encourages the production of goods that some
bureaucrat in Washington values most.

Not only does government spending cause capital to be reallocated away from consumer demands, it
also encourages waste by not rewarding the most efficient producers. You work hard for your money and,
therefore, are careful to shop for full value. You try to pick a tailor who will give you the best buy for your
money. The bureaucrat, on the other hand, does not work at all for the money. He spends someone else's
money, someone he does not even know. Getting the most value from the money he has taken from you
cannot be as important to him as getting value for the money would have been to you.

While production is encouraged by government expenditure, it is not necessarily the efficient producer
who gains. More importance is placed on giving contracts to companies that offer some political benefit to
the bureaucrat than to those companies offering the best products for the lowest price. Government
spending is naturally wasteful.

[Sparky]

I curse every time I see one of these signs in Massachusetts.

[SLV^GLD]

Man, that snippet from the Alpha Strategy is a perfect explanation for the requirement that government construction contracts now subcontract a minimum of 70% of the contract to minority and woman owned businesses. It's a huge boondoggle. Terrible craftsmanship and work ethic with the brunt of the fallout directed to the general contractor who was forced to sub out to the regulation instead of the market.

No, I'm not bitter.... /sarcasm.

[Horn]

I curse every time I see one of these signs in Massachusetts.



Common ground there, Sparky.