"[As Henry Home (Lord Kames) has written, a goal of taxation should be to] 'remedy inequality of riches as much as possible, by relieving the poor and burdening the rich.'" -- Adam Smith

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One of the persistent memes surrounding the I-69 issue is that of economic stability that the highwill will provide. Using data supplied by the Economic Policy Institute and the Federal Highway Administration we plotted the level of NAFTA-related job loss vs. existing rural interstate density per state. As you can see in the graph below, there is no correlation between a state's rural interstate infrastructure and its ability to create or retain jobs in the NAFTA era.

In particular, Indiana is fourth in the nation in existing rural interstate density. It was second in the nation for job loss in the seven years 1993-2000.