7 ms·
I accept that national defense is not a profit center, neither are highways. But they are good for everybody so it's ok that the taxpayer pays for them. The sam
by maxxxxx 7y ago
I accept that national defense is not a profit center, neither are highways. But they are good for everybody so it's ok that the taxpayer pays for them. The same may be true for TARP but I don't like to hear that TARP made profit because it didn't. Since 2008 we had huge deficits, banks got a backstop for free, the fed had to take on a lot of assets it normally should't have to, interest rates are very low. These all have a price.
TARP was not a benign thing but instead we should make sure this never happens again.
- zaroth 7y agoHighways are absolutely a profit center. The Fed spends ~$50 billion/year on highways and gets ~20% of the entire productivity of the nation in return. ($4 trillion on $20 trillion GDP) If the entire highway system increases GDP at least $250 billion (1.25% of GDP) then highways are profitable.
- wallace_f 7y agoThere do exist a lot of private roads. If govt did not build them for free, there would obviously be a lot more of them.
- zaroth 7y agoBut the government didn’t build them for free. We collectively paid to build them, and now they more than pay for themselves. Roads are arguably the greatest investment the American taxpayer has ever made. Building pubic-use roads without government planning, permitting, and eminent domain is frankly not going to scale, aside from the nightmare of how all the different owners of these roads would go about rent-seeking.