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As a subscriber you can listen to articles at work, in the car, or while you work out. Subscribe NowAccording to Sheila Suess Kennedy’s [Dec. 19] column, doubling down on the $1 trillion stimulus package from 2009 will result in a panacea of new jobs (23,000) per $1 billion.
Knowing only $150 billion of the $890 billion spent on the stimulus from 2009 actually went to infrastructure, then the United States should have seen over 3.4 million jobs created. Did the economy see this return on investment?
She asks what is the worst that would happen if we took the advice? Perhaps passing to future generations over $1.4 trillion in debt (with interest) on worthless political spending.
She also states that “Our bridges might stop falling down?”
In August 2007 in Minneapolis, 13 people died when a bridge failed due to excessive static weight summed by commuter traffic and construction equipment. Before then, the last time a bridge “fell down” and causing a death was March 1995 in Colinga, Calif., when high rains and extreme water volume undermined the river piers of the bridge, causing seven deaths.
I welcome new jobs from any source that is legal and market-driven. Government mandated “infrastructure” spending is not market-driven, and knowing that less than 17 percent of the original stimulus actually went to infrastructure spending, I question the legality.
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Bart Fisher
Plainfield
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