Don't ask, but I got this from Glenn Beck's website. It's for his "university", which to me, comes off as a Econ 101/Personal Finance Continuing Education type-class.
This jumped out at me:
Key Principle #3 - Investment vs. Consumption – Governments don’t “Invest”
Concepts: Building a bridge is not an “investment”
Investments must return profit
Consumption devours profit
Watch For: Anything in the government offering to “Invest” in America
Now, I don't know their rationale for this, and I'm not going to sign up for his stupid classes to get a few laughs, but this strikes me as a bit dumb. If a town has a river between it and another town, and it takes truckers 4 hours to go around to another bridge even though its only a few miles away "as the crow flies", then surely building a bridge that would cut that route to 20 minutes would a good thing for both economies, no?
This is what's known as common sense. You increase productivity, you increase the flow of goods, you increase trade and the exchange of goods, services and ideas. It's most certainly an investment.
My question is, do you have to be liberal to see this? Can anyone make their case why this might be right (devil's advocate).