by James Hickman
Schiff Sovereign
In a 2022 interview, then-Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg discussed how we was going to spend $1.2 trillion of taxpayer money from the recently passed infrastructure bill.
“The main thing I’m thinking about,” he said, “is how do we make sure we take all this money— you know it’s $1.2 trillion— and actually deliver $1.2 trillion dollars worth of value. . .”
That whole way of thinking is just astonishing.
If you invest $1 million in a business, you’re obviously going to expect that the CEO will deliver a lot more than $1 million in value from that investment. In fact a good executive will be able to turn a $1 million investment into tens or hundreds of millions of dollars in value.
But a couple years ago, when he was still Transportation Secretary, Pete encapsulated the government’s approach to investing. They’re not looking to get a 100x, 10x, or even 2x return.