The article cites this as the essential feature of Keyne's theory that Obama is calling for: government spending should make up the difference between national

The article cites this as the essential feature of Keyne's theory that Obama is calling for: government spending should make up the difference between national capacity for economic output, and the current projected level of economic output. Paraphrasing the article: the US economy has a $15 trillion capacity, but the lack of effective demand has reduced our projected output to $14 trillion. By spending $650 billion we can make up that difference in output with the help of Keynesian multipliers. I certainly sympathize with the parent. For the last three months I canvassed for Greenpeace pushing a reinvestment in renewable energy. One gentleman whose door I knocked on was skeptical (way more than just this one guy, door-to-door canvassing amidst recession is a great job if you enjoy getting kicked in the nuggets 100 times/day). He speculated the green movement was just another attempt to sell a newly packaged bubble to the American people. So are we foolish to pursue this short-term fix? Is the reinvestment plan fairly characterized as a short-term fix? To the first question I can at least express the hope that this investment will leave us with something inherently useful: much needed improvements to our infrastructure. We've been riding the wave of cheap energy from the petrochemical revolution for the last 100 years (thanks Steve Jobs Playboy article) and that is certainly appearing to mainstream America as a habit to kick. To the second question, maybe it will help to explore the long term consequences of not meeting our productive capacity. By analogy we can consider the consequences of not meeting our capacity to educate. Imagine if America lost an entire year of engineering graduates. A short fall in capacity may result in a long-term compounded drop in overall engineering output.