Tuesday, August 18, 2009

Our Tax Dollars at Work

Not far from of our office, on Cicero Avenue, about two blocks south of Peterson Avenue, is this sign:



There's another such sign about a mile west of Haus Jansen, along 26th Street, just east of Harlem Avenue.

I've seen several other such signs around Chicagoland recently. No doubt there are hundreds (thousands?) more elsewhere around the country.

For them that don't know, the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act is what most of us call simply "The Stimulus". And so, as a result of these signs, we now know that some of the $787 billion of our tax dollars are being used to fund repairs on state and local roads (not to mention the signs themselves).

Could someone explain to me why the good people of Boston, Charleston, Dayton, Louisiana, Washington, Houston, Kingston, Texarkana, Monterey, Faraday, Santa Fe, Tallapoosa, Glen Rock, Black Rock, Little Rock, Oskaloosa, Tennessee, Hennessey, Chicopee, Spirit Lake, Grand Lake, Devils Lake, or Crater Lake (for Pete's sake) should have to pay for roads to be repaired in Illinois?

3 comments:

Michelle said...

Wow! Did you come up with that nifty list of cities yourself? ;)

The Dutchman said...

It's called counter-cyclical economics. The idea is when spending slows in the consumer sector, the government evens out the economic seas by accelerating capital programs. It's done on a federal level because when unemployment rises, state and local governments are particularly strapped. Even before the theory was formulated, Henry Clay advocated government spending to pull the country out of the Van Buren recession of the late 1830's.

John Jansen said...

Michelle—

I wish. It's actually from the Johnny Cash song "I've Been Everywhere".