Can I say something that really bugs me here. Obnama talks about infrastructure, about building new ports, ports for the twenty-first century. As if that would get the economy moving. Infrastructure is important in an economy, but it does not drive an economy. You need incentives for capital to make the needed investments to start and grow businesses before any of this investment in infrastructure will have any effect. I mean, lets take the poorest economy in the western hemisphere, Haiti. Lets borrow money and build the best ports in the world there. Lets build bullet trains. Do you think that that would make Haiti more prosperous? Without the incentive for business and capital to become more profitable, to make their risks pay off, all you would have are empty ports.
Obama wants to build new ports to pay off his union buddies. Otherwise, every act he does punishes capital formation and investment. Higher taxes, higher employee costs, increased unionization, greater regulation, higher energy costs, on and on, are disincentives to economic growth. All the bullet trains in the world won't change that.
Obama believes that economic growth comes from the top down. That you take from the top and redistribute to the bottom. It is so back assward that one marvels in its stupidity. I mean, Where on this great blue planet has it ever worked that way? Cut regulations, cut corporate tax rates (to zero?), repeal Obamacare. Then get out of the way of the economic surge.
Like the bullet trains between LA and San Francisco. What economic function would it serve that cannot be served by the present transportation system, or by a fast locomotive train like the old Super Chief. with limited no.of stops and a decent dining car?
It isn't intended or even wanted to work economically. It works politically to "mobilize the masses" of the people, and the labor soviets, and the fellow travelers.
It helps to mobilize them for the great civil war he is preparing, that will establish the "new normal" .... in an America much less white and, for that matter, much less populous, if necessary.