Economists like to argue that, in times of economic hardship, if we pay someone to dig a ditch and then pay them again to fill it back in, we’ll stimulate the economy in helpful ways. The case for infrastructure spending is an extension of that logic: If instead of digging and filling a ditch, we spend the money on concrete, steel, and asphalt, we’re actually better off because we’ve built something useful. What is obvious but not acknowledged in that narrative is that, with the ditch, we ultimately end up back where we started. No long-term liability. In contrast, when we build a road or a
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