Hazlitt - Public works mean taxes

[FindLiberty]

This is only the IRS, "taxpayer" end of that "dog" pictured here...

How big is the OTHER end of that ugly thing, you know, where all those "loans" from the federal reserve fly out? It's many magnitudes bigger than mere taxes and the "taxpayer" has no way in Hell to get control of that sphincter!

I think that's an important issue that needs to (also?) be addressed/included when discussing the OP issue whenever the term "taxpayer" is used.

A few thousand feet away from my keyboard that I'm typing on, is a nearly completed $14,000,000 road improvement project (still underway). It will soon make driving much faster, smoother and safer for me and hundreds of thousands of other drivers (4 lane roadway becomes 6 lanes wide with huge 9 lane intersections!). It's all funded by the fiat money printing press, not "taxpayers". While most think it's "free" win-win money (where no actual windows or taxpayer's backs were even broken), many know there is indeed a price / consequence attached to it. Inflation and eventual collapse of the USD come to mind!

Then, there is the even bigger, uglier MIC dark side; the hate generating, killbot creating death machine that essentially gets ALL its funding from the printing press (EFT's via mouse clicks). So far, other than a few buildings lost on 9/11/2001, most of the resulting broken windows are located in other far away countries, so far... The MSM propaganda machines all say we are helping those that hate us because of some crappy YouTube movie, and more taxes should come from the "rich" all the while the Creature from Jekyll Island is ignored (since the year 1910).

I think the bigger questions of the day are: "Do taxpayer taxes even matter anymore now that they're hidden in the shadow of QE 1-2-3-4 and habitual budget deficit funding? Ultimately, does this buy more windows than it breaks in the long run or does it set us up for a crash at some point in the future?

Do public work projects like a bridge, provide employment at the expense of employment in the private sector?

I think the answer is no, not at all ...at first. More jobs are indeed created! Excess capacity (a bubble in constrution equipment and labor force size) will result because of the massive fiat funding!!! Prices will rise at some point because of inflation. Eventually, that inflation will impact everything, not just the public service project of the moment. At that point, maybe decades later, employment will react and contract.