'I am confident that, at some point in my professional career as an engineer and a planner working for and advising local governments on capital improvement projects, I used the phrase, "it takes money to make money." This is an idiom that is quite American and it is particularly poignant as we move through the Desperation Phase of the Suburban Experiment. 

The idea here is that one needs to put something at risk if one is going to experience a gain. A related idiom is, "nothing risked, nothing gained." And clearly we can see that, in the Ponzi Scheme of Growth we find ourselves in, those local governments that do nothing to generate growth are generally seen as falling behind (in the near term).

I have about a dozen directions I want to take this, but for today I'm just going to focus on this one line of thinking: Why do we seem to culturally believe this is true? What makes a broad mass of people generally be supportive of speculative public projects like new highways, stadiums, reconditioning the downtown or building an "entertainment district", sold to the public as "growth"?'

- Charles Marohn,  - It takes money to make money?