In New Orleans a tremendous amount of money will be expended on getting us back to where we were before. The same people will be living in substantially the same housing and working in substantially the same office buildings and yet $billions will have been spent to pump out water and shore up foundations. In New York at least $10 billion will be spent on rebuilding the World Trade Center site. It might be a little nicer than what was there on September 10, 2001 but functionally will be similar in terms of office space square footage. This $10 billion will be recorded as an addition to GDP but it won’t have the same positive impact the World Trade Center remaining standing and $10 billion of entirely new office space constructed in growing regions of the U.S.
Technorati tags: economics
Ken Dyck 