That wasn’t the difference you discussed above. But shoehorning in military spending and bridges to nowhere into your argument after the fact only emphasises that “job creation” isn’t really the key issue here (a marine welder can work on building an aircraft carrier or a yacht, or a municipal ferry).
Putting that aside on your prompting, then, we come back to how much public good is realised from the spending. While most people here, myself included, would like to see far less government spending on the military and fewer boondoggles (including those perpetrated by members of the so-called party of fiscal responsibility like Ted Stevens), we’ll acknowledge that a lot government spending still reflects a genuine public good. We have a vote on those things, so the people applying the funds have limited accountability to us. The same things can’t be said of billionaires spending excess money (that might otherwise go to taxes) on mega-yachts they use for only a few weeks each year.
So, again, if you prefer those dollars being spent on a project that offers zero chance of public benefit vs. one that offers more than a zero chance of public benefit, and if you prefer having no accountability on spending, I don’t know what to tell you.
