Posts tagged as:

spending

House Approves $819B Stimulus Plan

by Matt Ball on January 29, 2009

The stimulus plan was passed by the House last night, and moves on to the Senate as early as Monday. The legislation includes roughly $544 billion in spending and $275 in tax cuts. It also includes a last-minute addition of $3 billion for mass transit. The measure is likely to morph further in the Senate [...]

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Trends in Federal R&D Spending

by Matt Ball on December 23, 2008

A recent post on the Dot Earth blog asks some questions of Obama’s incoming science team. An aside here is the historical federal spending on R&D with some revealing details (see image above). The chart doesn’t include the more than $80B level of spending on defense R&D, which dwarfs all other spending. Health spending has [...]

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11,000 Jobs for Every Billion Spent

by Matt Ball on November 6, 2008

Research into the job benefits of infrastructure spending in Canada puts the number of jobs created for every $1 billion spent at 11,000, according to the Federation of Canadian Municipalities (FCM). The investment to fix roads, transit, water and wastewater creates jobs for laborers, material and machinery manufacturers, and other sectors. Further calculations place the [...]

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If you were a customer, how would you approach the purchase of new geotechnology for your organisation?

by Matt Ball on April 18, 2008

This column is sponsored by ESRI Deciding on the purchase of new geotechnology is something that I’d do by looking at the cost, expected lifecycle and maintenance expenses weighed against the contribution of the purchase toward the organization’s insight, efficiency and bottom line. Geotechnology purchases require a varying scale of commitment because there are multiple [...]

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