A Bridge is not an Investment

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:



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).

I think most conservatives would disagree with him on this issue too.

is that investments=profits if the equation doesn't workout like that it isn't an investment. In your example making the truckers drive farther might be beneficial to selling more fuel and screwing them over for pay if you don't account for the time it takes them to get there, the extra time might force them to miss a deadline-get less pay, maybe they'd have to wait an extra day to offload-spend money on food. Turning 4hours into 20minutes might help the areas in that new path but not the ones along the old one, so that is 'relative' business wise, does it make more sense of course, will it make things more efficient again yes but to that crowd an investment is solely about turning a profit.

Of course, this also comes from the man who says that government doesn't employ people.