Off the Rails: GOP Opens Reign By Killing Jobs

You know, there are often hidden fallacies embedded within these "massive spending == job creation" arguments.

Chief among these being, all of the regional governments are currently facing major budget crises, and (no matter whom you chose to blame) are already laying off blue-collar workers, helter-skelter, as a result.

For example, in reference to the ARC project cited in the article, MTA (the agency which runs the NYC subway and regional rail lines, for example), looking at something like an 810m deficit, and has slashed something on the order of 600 jobs as a result -- not to mention collateral economic damage to the region caused by loss of transit service, and the damage to come caused by enormous (20%+) fee hikes it is proposing.

Of course, money for the ARC project wasn't coming directly out of the MTA budget. But the money has to come from somewhere; part of the reason behind the current MTA morass has a lot to do with the lack of NY state money (or moral capital) to bail them out.

Point being, however you slice it, money is finite; gobs of money (supposedly) creating X jobs over here could also be spent creating (or saving) X+1 jobs over there, etc.

Another aspect to consider is that for some reason, people seem to love to cut and paste supposed job creation figures for these wonderful projects, without looking into what these figures rally mean (let alone whether they can be substantiated). So quite often you'll find that "6,000 jobs" really means, umm, guess what, "6,000 job-years", or more like an average of 1,200 jobs over a 5-year project (say).

And that's even if these jobs actually come into being (to the extent advertised). It actually turns out to be really, really difficult to predict the number of jobs that will be directly created by any of these projects.

I actually tend to favor, or at least consider to be not so bad,the idea of spending for job creation on general principle -- but at best it should be thought of as a "winback", or an ameliorating effect of the fiscal damage caused by extravagant ($10B+) public spending projects.

At the end of the day, they should be evaluated for the direct benefits they might bring (e.g. relief of congestion, revenue from projected ridership), rather than as the fantastic "job creation engines" they are often touted as being.