Tag Henry Hazlitt

This post is part of an ongoing series featured on Market Urbanism called Urbanism Legends. The Urbanism Legends series is intended to expose many of the myths about development and Urban Economics. (it’s a play on the term: “Urban Legends” in case you didn’t catch that) Last week President-elect Obama announced some details of his economic stimulus package: Second, we will create millions of jobs by making the single largest new investment in our national infrastructure since the creation of the federal highway system in the 1950s. We’ll invest your precious tax dollars in new and smarter ways This further taxpayer subsidization, beyond currently insufficient highway revenue sources, of sprawl and auto-dependency seems to contradict Obama’s promise of “green jobs”. As Tyler Cowen remarks, “for better or worse you can consider the opposite of a carbon tax.” Furthermore, the Obama plan intends to fund the stimulus directly to states, as opposed to metro areas, which have historically received almost two-thirds of the funds directly. Certainly, Obama’s plan is not an urbanism-friendly plan, yet I consistently hear urbanists subscribing to and spreading the myth that jobs can be created by spending on infrastructure, and that these jobs will lead to economic recovery. Even if the job creation myth were true, and could stimulate the economy immediately, you would think urbanists would not sacrifice urbanist ideals for the sake of short-term recovery through their commitment to so-called progressive ideology. In his enduring 1961 classic, Economics in One Lesson, Henry Hazlitt addresses the long-standing myth about “creating jobs” through public works projects: A bridge is built. If it is built to meet an insistent public demand, if it solves a traffic problem or a transportation problem otherwise insoluble, if, in short, it is even more necessary to the taxpayers collectively than the things for which […]