For example, fully funding education would not only put thousands of teachers back to work, it also would maintain the standard of excellence New Jersey has established in its system of public education. And a teacher’s paycheck spends the same as Panasonic worker’s paycheck, especially when both are financed by tax dollars.
And if the state has the wherewithal to finance the construction of a casino, as it did this year with a $261 million Economic Redevelopment and Growth grant to the developers of the Revel casino in Atlantic City, why can’t it use other available resources to build schools?
The School Development Authority has $3.9 billion in untapped bonding capacity. There’s not so much difference in the state using that borrowing authority to build a school than there is in the state tapping 20 years of future tax revenues to finance the construction of a casino. Certainly, building schools would put just as many trade laborers to work and create just as many jobs for teachers as building casinos would add workers. But the school construction would benefit the public by replacing schools in the state that have been deemed unfit for students and boarded up.
This is not just about investing in schools and teachers. There are dozens of other such opportunities for public investment — green energy, road and bridge repairs, transit — that will allow the state to directly create jobs, in both the public and private sectors.
Any of those options would seem to be a better strategy than throwing money at corporations and hoping for good results.
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