Without Government Building Airports, A Company Like Federal Express Would Not Be Feasible

[Yavin4]

The history of LaGuardia airport in NY:

During the Floyd Bennett experiment, La Guardia and American executives began an alternative plan to build a new airport in Queens, where it could take advantage of the new Queens-Midtown Tunnel to Manhattan. The existing North Beach Airport was an obvious location, but much too small for the sort of airport that was being planned. With backing and assistance from the Works Progress Administration, construction began in 1937.[8] Building on the site required moving landfill from Rikers Island, then a garbage dump, onto a metal reinforcing framework. The framework below the airport still causes magnetic interference on the compasses of outgoing aircraft: signs on the airfield warn pilots about the problem.[9]

More:

The airport was dedicated on October 15, 1939, as the New York Municipal Airport, and opened for business on that December 2.[7] It cost New York City $23 million to turn the tiny North Beach Airport into a 550-acre (220 ha) modern facility. Not everyone was as enthusiastic as La Guardia about the project, some regarded it as a $40-million boondoggle. But the public was fascinated by the very idea of air travel, and thousands traveled to the airport, paid the dime fee, and watched the airliners take off and land. Two years later these fees and their associated parking had already provided $285,000, and other non-travel related incomes (food, etc.) were another $650,000 a year. The airport was soon a huge financial success. A smaller airport located in adjacent Jackson Heights, Holmes Airport, was unable to prevent the expansion of the larger airport and it closed in 1940.

That kind of infrastructure investment is what is sorely needed today, and because of that public investment, major Fortune 500 companies exist like FedEx, UPS, and internet retailers, etc.

[robinlynne]

1. and still both parties speak loudly against the "deficit". Govt spenidn is exactly what is needed.