Tuesday, January 13, 2009

IBM hops on Alex's bandwagon

The smart-grid wagon, that is. From today's WSJ:

"We at IBM were asked to map this out by President-elect Barack Obama's transition team, and our research shows that a $30 billion stimulus investment in just three areas -- smart grids, health-care IT and broadband -- could yield almost one million new jobs within one year. That's possible because these kinds of infrastructure have significantly greater economic and societal multiplier effects than traditional infrastructure like bridges and highways."

Gee, I wonder if they had asked a steel company chief if he would have reached the same conclusion. I guess every cloud has a rent seeking lining.

How is this any different from Larry Flynt's recent statements (by the way, big ups to Alex for the best blogpost title ever on this one)?

1 comment:

Tom said...

The essay by Greenspun was excellent -- except that he qualified his plan a couple times with the killer phrase "if [government/leader] has the political will." Ah, yes. That's a very big IF.