It is an article of faith among liberals that one of the best ways the federal government can reduce unemployment is to borrow billions of dollars and spend it on infrastructure projects. For example, at a recent press conference President Obama made his case for creating an “infrastructure bank” that “could put construction workers to work right now, rebuilding our roads and our bridges and our vital infrastructure all across the country.”

Let’s put aside, for the moment, that Obama should have already learned the lesson that infrastructure spending is not a path to immediate job creation. It was just two months ago that, Obama jokingly told his own Council on Jobs and Competitiveness, “Shovel-ready was not as … uh .. shovel-ready as we expected.”