I was sitting in a traffic jam one day, and a politician was being interviewed on the radio. He was arguing for spending a sizeable sum to improve the very highway on which I sat motionless. The interviewer pointed out the large expected cost of the project, and noted that it would actually make traffic much worse while it was under way. “Ahh yes, but it will be well worth it”, the official asserted. “It would shorten the average commute by at least 10 minutes for thousand