Thanks for not calling it a sweet neo-con deal. (We're rolling in Stones traffic today. Who da thunk it?)

Some Bastiat would also be appropriate.

A well maintained transportation infrastructure does help keep trade moving. Trade can move, manufacturing, commerce, and tourism can proceed.

However, when oil becomes too expensive for personal transportation, what will we do about all those useless roads.?

"Now he is writing about the economics of the mixed economy."

Yes, Hazlitt's Economics in One Lesson is very good. One of the books that converted me away from socialism was Hayek's The Road to Serfdom. Also, Friedman's Capitalism and Freedom. And, of course, Rand's Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal.

Way, way too many people (based on premises consciously or unconsciously derived from Marx) define capitalism as "whatever is good for business", including government theft from the poor to give to the rich (see Kelo).

Capitalism has nothing whatever to do with that. Capitalism means government respects property rights, of rich and poor alike, and stays out of economics just as it stays out of religion. As Ayn Rand defined it:

"Capitalism is a social system based on the recognition of individual rights, including property rights, in which all property is privately owned."

That, and nothing less.

Yes it's Pork! But of all the pork that the gvt doles out, we do need better roads. How else are we going to maintain them. Now that W has given pork to every state, he can move ahead with base closure for consolidation of our military infrastructure. Politics is politics!

Steven,

You won't believe this but on one of my many bookshelves a copy of Capitalism & Freedom sits atop the Road to Serfdom. Completing the pyramid are Economics in One Lesson and the Federalist papers.

They catch my eye every morning as I head out the door.

After I moved into my new apartment and started stocking the shelves they seemed like a logical set and one day soon I will pay them more attention than I have till now.

I've never read anything by Ayn Rand.