Where did that money go?
Nobody is asking.
I drilled down (I love saying “drilled down”! Drilled down, drilled down, drilled down!) thru some projects near me, and found quite an array of expenditures.
Some were pretty straightforward — $3 million to resurface part of a state highway that did definitely need it (but I don’t know whether it would’ve gotten done without money from other states’ taxpayers; they shouldn’t have had to pay for it, anyway).
Others were more obscure, like money to area school districts for enhancing access to job training for 3-5-year-olds, or something, and grants for judicial diversion programs, where some of the money went to the ACLU and something called “Justice 2000”. Other expenditures went to the “Pot Belly Cafe” for a meeting — I guess they provided the sandwiches — and to a printer for a job advertisement. Some of the descriptions were so encumbered by consultant-speak I couldn’t tell what they were even supposed to be for.
So not all of the money went to create new jobs. Some went to existing employers, and some was obviously just poured down various bureaucratic and NGO ratholes. I don’t know how you could ever tell how necessary or legitimate all the expenditures were.