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Stimulus Plan at Work
July 13, 2009 Macroeconomics

Last week our family was driving along this lightly traveled road in Wayne County, NY (a rural area East of Rochester).

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This road does not see much truck traffic, nor does it get much commuter traffic. By all accounts, it appears to be in very good condition, particularly as compared to many of the similar styled roads here in Monroe County. Well, they are resurfacing that road as we speak. And when our family drove through, guess how large the road-crew was that was “working” on the resurfacing project? 5? Nope. 10? Nope. 15? Nope. Try seventeen “workers.” It appeared that all were from the Wayne County Highway Department. There were at most 4 pieces of equipment there which required operation, and granting that one extra person would attend each piece of machinery and giving 2 people the task of managaing traffic, at most you might be able to justify 10 people being there. Of the 17 we saw when we passed, at least 9 was standing around doing nothing. And no, this is not unique – I rarely see roadwork done in these parts without heavy doses of folks just sitting around.

Remember, for the “stimulus” to be stimulating, it needs to be putting people to work who otherwise would not be working … it must not be pulling people and capital from other more productive activities, including other stimulus-type projects. What we witnessed was a close to ditch digging as it gets. Nice to know that I at least had the chance to use the thing that I was paying for.

"3" Comments
  1. Benjamin Napier

    CSEA!!!!!! Worthlesss union bums directed by worthless bureaucrats. There is no reason to actually accomplish anything at all. The reason to exist is to fill a spot on a roster and rationalize a payout. It is a crime, pure and simple. And not retstricted to NY or to union areas. The other day I went into town around 0900 and saw 10 non-union Texas Highway dept bums sitting under a tree in the bar ditch. Two trucks and some hand tools were evident. That afternoon at around 1500 I returned and the same bunch was sitting under the same tree, chewing the same fat. They had not moved any of the vehicles at all and had done nothing visible. Our tax dollars at waste!

  2. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if someone were to take a page from Michael Moore’s playbook to create a film or website devoted to filming roadside crews and the like pissing away our taxes…

  3. Pingback: Hate to Say I Told You So | The Unbroken Window

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