Obras públicas
A propósito do previsto anúncio de construção da terceira travessia do Tejo em Lisboa, e da notícia que dá conta de que a Quercus se opõe a que inclua o transporte rodoviário (preferindo a restrição à ferrovia), lembrei-me do que escreveu Henry Hazzlit, no seu "Economics in One Lesson" (disponivel online gratuitamente), no capítulo "Public Works Mean Taxes":
A certain amount of public spending is necessary to perform essential government functions. A certain amount of public works — of streets and roads and bridges and tunnels, of armories and navy yards, of buildings to house legislatures, police and fire departments—is necessary to supply essential public services.(...)Aconselho a leitura completa do capítulo e, claro, do livro.
A bridge is built. If it is built to meet an insistent public demand, if it solves a traffic problem or a transportation problem otherwise insoluble, if, in short, it is even more necessary to the taxpayers collectively than the things for which they would have individually spent their money had it had not been taxed away from them, there can be no objection. But a bridge built primarily “to provide employment” is a different kind of bridge. When providing employment becomes the end, need becomes a subordinate consideration. “Projects” have to be invented. Instead of thinking only of where bridges must be built the government spenders begin to ask themselves where bridges can be built.
