How liberals define the word ‘Investment’

I swear Debbie Wasserman-Schultz is nothing more than an automaton. Her only, ahem, skill is to take the Administration's talking points concerning the economy and regurgitate them ad nauseum. Her economic expertise is not even one question deep. For your reading pleasure I give you her statement in an interview yesterday on Fox News as she tries to push the President's American Jobs Plan porkulus II (emphasis mine):

"At the end of the day, we have to make sure that we don't continue to deepen our problems by laying off more teachers, firefighters and police officers. We have to make sure we put construction workers back to work like the American Jobs Plan would do by investing in the infrastructure we need, and we have to make sure that this is paid for by folks who are not paying their fair share now, making sure that the wealthy and more fortunate step up to the plate, and that's how we're going to get this done."

Ok, just for giggles let's take a look at what the definition of the word investment is:

in·vest·ment [in-vest-muhnt]

noun

1. the investing  of money or capital in order to gain profitable returns, as interest, income, or appreciation in value.

2. a particular instance or mode of investing.

3. a thing invested  in, as a business, a quantity of shares of stock, etc.

4. something that is invested;  sum invested.

5. the act or fact of investing  or state of being invested,  as with a garment.

 
Okay, deconstruction time. First of all it is NOT the federal government's responsibility to maintain state and local public servants (i.e. teachers, police, firefighters etc.). This notion of investing in these 'jobs' is absurd in the extreme. Ultimately, what she is advocating here is to reward bad behavior at the expense of other communities who do balance their budgets.

But what just kills me is that she sees state and local bailouts as - wait for it - an investment. What she does not understand is these jobs, while necessary, are cost centers for the country NOT wealth generators. Her idea of 'investment' is to take capital away from those who have the ability to actually invest in wealth/job generating activities, and award it non-wealth generating activates.

I am certainly in favor of have safe roads, Police, teachers and firefighters, but these are necessary leakages from any economy. And these necessary entities should never, ever be confused with wealth generation. Roads in and of themselves do not generate wealth, only short-term jobs; there is no return on investment here. Whereas Wasserman-Schultz would have us believe the construction of roads will magically give the taxpayer a dividend once it is complete.

This brings us to how erroneously Wasserman-Schultz and her liberal friends view the U.S. economy. She is convinced that if she takes money away from the evil wealthy (those making $200,000 a year) and flush it down the Keynesian toilet we can lower unemployment. While public sector jobs are 'created', at the expense of the private sector, absolutely NO wealth or long-term INVESTMENT is crated. Debbie please, please, please do yourself a favor and dust off that old Econ 101 text book and see exactly what the role of the federal government is. Here is a hint, it is not to create jobs - it is to get the hell out of the way so those who know what they are doing can.