Directly To
Your Inbox
PJ Media appreciates your comments that abide by the following guidelines:
1. Avoid profanities or foul language unless it is contained in a necessary quote or is relevant to the comment.
2. Stay on topic.
3. Disagree, but avoid ad hominem attacks.
4. Threats are treated seriously and reported to law enforcement.
5. Spam and advertising are not permitted in the comments area.
These guidelines are very general and cannot cover every possible situation. Please don't assume that PJ Media management agrees with or otherwise endorses any particular comment. We reserve the right to filter or delete comments or to deny posting privileges entirely at our discretion. Please note that comments are reviewed by the editorial staff and may not be posted immediately. If you feel your comment was filtered inappropriately, please email us at story@pjmedia.com.
16 Comments, 16 Threads
Leave a Reply
So how is building a new hotel for $386 million a waste of stimulus money? Building the hotel creates construction jobs and all sorts of related jobs. Managing the hotel create more jobs. The people who check into the hotel spend their cash in the community thus helping to stimulate the economy.
And about those signs. I’ve heard a price of $300.00 per sign, not $3000. And “millions” of dollars for these signs. Maybe this boy genius would care to identify his sources as any credible journalist? I noticed he didn’t show any of these signs in his report.
And those jump cuts may look “hip” to some but to this media guy they look amateurish.
Oh. Ladybird Lake used to be called Town Lake. Not Austin Lake or Lake Austin.
To Pat J
With hardly any work, I found articles about the road signs costing any where between $1,200 to $ 2,000 installed. With more research, I’d probably find ones in say, California where everything is more expensive, that cost $3,000. Regardless, Pennsylvania spent $60,000 on 30 signs alone. $60,000 multiplied by 50 is $3 million. So I’d say the “boy genius” was closer than you were. Oh and oooh, we are so impressed that you are a media guy. Wow, awesome.
BTW, I thought the video was hilarious. But then, I’m not a “media guy”.
Yeah, Well, up yours. The bottom line is this kid is a conservative assclown. He couldn’t get the name of the lake right so no telling how much misinformation and propaganda is tied into his pathetic attempt at satire.
Pat J
Nice comeback. And how many states did Obama say there were? Oh yeah, I remember….57.
“So how is building a new hotel for $386 million a waste of stimulus money?”
Why haven’t private sector investors put their money earlier into the project? That’s normally because there is no reasonable expectation of success. This project is getting off the ground only because of political favoritism. Taxpayers should be scared excrement-less. They will be stuck with all the losses. The “if you build it—they will come” philosophy may have worked for Kevin Costner in that baseball movie, but in the real world it is usually a sure fire way of losing a lot of money. And it gets worse when a hotel actually opens for business. The expenses of running such a project are mind boggling. That earlier estimate of $386 million could easily go over $800 million.
@Pat J
Is there any part of economic theory, that you understand or adhere to, any? I just want to find a starting point. Just name one. Discussing economics with liberals often feels like discussing nuclear physics with a 3 year old. It really doesn’t matter what you say. For instance do you think it’s a good idea to have public employees who’s job function is to hand you the toilet paper when you go to a public restroom like they had in the Soviet Union. It’s a job. Have you ever heard about the idea that for the economy to grow healthily, money have to flow to the most productive entities. And that personal choice is the best way to ensure that. Does those kinds of ideas have any kind of resonance with you?
I traveled from Cape Cod to CT two weeks ago and saw 2 signs on highways, one in Mass. and one in RI, saying something along the lines of “This Project is Due to the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009″. Just a sign, no workers, no trucks, no newly poured asphalt, no new guardrails, nothing. It reminded me of a video I saw before the ’08 election, where Tony Rezko had received some grant to fix up his apartment building, but the building had broken windows, no heat and was practically uninhabitable. Where’d that money go?
Sparky,
It is obvious that the project was putting up the sign. Later they can create another job to take it down.
but do you care when the military pays $3000 for a hammer?
@Tom
Clever mind game. Can you produce a real argument?
I mean other than variations over “look who’s talking”.
@7. JL:
——-
Let’s see. How about the law of supply and demand for one.
@12. Pat J
Ok good. Supply and demand dictates that if supply goes up prices go down. One extra hotel means that prices goes down for other hotels. Which means they make less money. This increases the risk of them not surviving. This creates a situation where a hotel that is not run efficiently might survive because they get government funding. This means that you work an extra maybe 1 minute every week and donate your money through taxes to that hotel without getting anything extra for it. Then let’s say instead of one hotel we have 1000 hundred different projects that is funded by the government. Then we have a situation where you work an extra 1000 minutes a week and donate your money to various projects and get nothing extra from it. End result is that you work 18 hours extra and get the same service.
That is why conservatives think it’s a waste of stimulus money to build a hotel that costs $386 million.
The hotel itself will create 3800 jobs. http://dallas.bizjournals.com/dallas/stories/2008/12/08/daily11.html?surround=lfn&brthrs=1. How is that a waste of money?
More hotel rooms means more people can afford to check into the other hotels if those hotels lower their prices. Which leads to more rates of occupancy at these other hotels. therefore, another first class hotel is good for the Dallas economy.
OK, I get your point. It will be good for the DALLAS economy. True.
How will it be good for US economy?
#6 David Thompson is right on.
#14 Pat J doesn’t see the bigger picture.
This is classic pork-barrel politics. The Hotel market was already sized correctly in Dallas. If it needed another one a private company would have seen the profits and built one. It’s just an excuse to spend money in your district at other’s expense. The gain of $386 million for Dallas is the loss of everyone else. There is no net gain. That’s the problem with government spending. It only shifts money from place to place. True investment creates money through the dynamics of banking’s reserve requirement.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fractional-reserve_banking