In his 2006 book Who Really Cares, Arthur Brooks wrote of how the late Robert Byrd’s generosity with the money of others could be found all over the state of West Virginia. There was the Robert C. Byrd Highway System, the Robert C. Byrd Bridge, the Robert C. Byrd Expressway, the Robert C. Byrd Federal Building, the Robert C. Byrd Health and Wellness Center, the Robert C. Byrd Institute for Advanced Flexible Manufacturing Systems. The list was long.
As readers can likely deduce, Brooks’s point was that if government spending actually boosted economies as economists (and economics types more broadly) generally believe, then it would be true that West Virginia would not be one of the poorest states in the United States. Except that it is one of the poorest U.S. states.
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