A simple rule about public spending on infrastructure, that some forget, and others would prefer remained that way: adding infrastructure is only beneficial if a resulting economic gain (should there be one) is greater than the cost of its acquisition (capital, labor, etc.).
There is no way around this.
Just about everything one hears about local pump-priming, sparking investment, getting things going, etc., ignores this truth, or rests on shoddy, inadequate reasoning to justify the expenditure.
If this were not so, Whitewater would already be, after all, far better off than the Lost City of Gold legendarily was.
She’s not.
One of the reasons that she’s not is that what passes for economic policy, business policy, and marketing is erroneous.
Not just erroneous, but erroneous in a silly, superstitious way. Nothing else worked, so this must be the thing.
We’ve poured a fortune into the ground, and yet we do not have any meaningful results.
These tired gentlemen cannot enumerate their supposed gains, lest the city see that they’re not truly gains at all.
Time’s running out, across America and in Whitewater, on a generation of puffery and self-promotion.