Actually to the contrary infrastructure is by far the most important thing to a growing economy. American capitalism as it is grew and thrived because of its advanced infrastrucutres.
Think about transportation. We started with carriage, roads, rail, boat and then plane. By investing the money in infrastructure sure there is short term job growth, however, by expanding and improving infrastructure we can now access roads that lead to new land for manufacturing, solar, nuclear, and other high technology job creation. These benefits will keep manufacturing stateside by offering lower cost production and distribution from imports/exports of goods and cheaper aquisition of sourcing materials such as oil, metals and resin.
Distribution and transportation of goods and services is paramount and by having the infrastructure to strategically place warehouses for distribution saves money for businesses and gets goods to customers faster.
What seems like a small thing with working on roads and power grids will pay very large dividends in the future with permanent jobs from the growth out of these projects.
which, idealy, is good... however...
One thing folks often ignore for one reason or another is the fact that society functions reasonably well, in large measure, because government does those things for the "greater good" that people wouldn't do if left to the law of the jungle. Governments are also responsible for a lot of **** such as pork barrel spending that benefits only themselves and their influential buddies, the military industrial complex, special interests that buy power and laws, etc. But realistically, that's never going to go away so long as man is man. Governments, broadly speaking, still provide much more good than we would have without them. Anyone who thinks otherwise is trying to live in some ideological fantasy where they are Ayn Rand's super capitalist. Except they ain't.
But of course, there is a great amount of variation over what one person considers a "good" versus another. There is also debate over which governments are best, and how ineffectual the U.S. government is at doing its job. But taxes are critically important if you think a public education--the backbone of national economic wellbeing--matters. Or if you value a reasonably fair system of justice, somewhat breathable air, having a small sliver of our natural environment kept safe from industrial destruction, a police force, national security, some semblance of protection against monopolization of industry, some semblance of worker protection so children don't work in coal mines, some semblance of economic and social protection against catastrophic health crises, etc. Our system ain't perfect, but to suggest that taxes aren't important is something I can't take very seriously. Call me nuts if you will, but I don't want a subsidiary of Wal-Mart or Exxon owning and operating all the schools and courts.
Which is where we are currently headed. The Oil industry fights solar, nuclear, and electrical power, as those things would be substancialy cheaper, thus cutting dramaticly into their buisness model. They have been around longer, and therefore have a GREAT DEAL OF CLOUT in washington as it is.
as an example, the Oil/gasoline industry is currently expierencing higher profits than it ever has in the history of its existance...
yet they cry when someone suggests tehy need to let up on teh federal subsidies they get.
Lets think about this: these companies earned a combined $229,832 every minute from January through March. This is more than what 95 percent of American households earn in an entire year. that's 1.39 BILLION per hour
for the record, Exxon-Mobil pays approxamately $12.3 million in taxes per hour, give or take. Where is that money going?
Granted, they also pay more taxes than other industries too, Exxon Mobil paid $7.7 billion in taxes in the first quarter of 2012, which was about double the amount of taxes paid by Apple - $3.9 billion. just for a point of reference.
But what is it going towords?
Oh... right... the HUGE defecit we've incurred as a result of fighting in two wars we never should have started.
" One must have stability at home, if one is to ever expect stability abroad" - Franklin Roosevelt
[ I may be slightly butchering that quote]
