Someone wants to spur economic growth in Iowa City by shooting out car windows. According to the Press-Citizen (link below), "approximately 75 reports have been made with a total estimated dollar amount of damage around $18,000." Just imagine, people had to spend $18,000 to repair those windows. Of course the repairers were then able to spend that money somewhere else, and so on. From the economic growth created, perhaps the city should be paying these would-be-thugs rather than trying to arrest them. Of course, this is a ridiculous idea. ... Unfortunately, too many people apply the broken window fallacy (I didn't make this up) to government spending all the time. People talk about the "jobs" created by government programs without consideration of the costs to taxpayers.