Certain kinds of government spending are immune from procurement rules that will make the money get spent on huge international companies that pay their employees crap wages, which in countries that sign the GPA, will soon be taking over virtually all government spending, much to the demise of unions, public workers, etc. Think global privatization thats irreversible.
So, when they talk about space or hypetrains, etc. this is really a way of signalling to your supporters that the government money will still be headed your way just by different means. They may have to get rid of all the public services and poor peoples stuff but you're still going to get the big bucks. The bigger and more high tech the more money can vanish into thin air without adult supervision, the better.
Wars are of course the best wasters of money. national emergencies are #2, Anything with emergency in its name is likely to be the most successfully inefficient.
Its also a clue that their supporters will have to be in only a few fields to get state money. (Military,
space, secret state, secret secret state (to spy on the secret staters) surveillance, secret police, super duper secret tech, actual legislators at federal, state, local or quasi-public entities, and so on)
Otherwise it will go up for
competitive bidding and the expensive countries
whose wages are alleged to be too high, won't (can't) get the work, cuz too willing to coddle the professional protectionists like most of us, and people everywhere with decent skills, so it will go "overseas" and if those workers want to bid down one anothers wages, they will, soon they will be making almost nothing.
This is like a gathering of all the people who really own and control the world telling the sham governments and the worker bees who's boss.
Who gets to take the honey and who gets the polluted sugar water.
Or whatever, it goes to the countries that have the high skill workers most willing to work for almost nothing. (After all worker bees have to eat something).
Most of those are administrative or various professions (including engineering) but really almost all jobs will get pulled into this net - Most jobs involving any tax money at all
will soon be done over the Internet. Its possible even grammar and high schools will be globalized and then as incomes fall still more, likely automated. (because tax receipts will sink because everybody will be unemployed). (Lots of people will also be homeless and dispossessed, they may lose the right to vote, its hard to say how or if their children will be able to access schooling) Countries that don't currently have public education wont be able to give people it (see the rules on domestic regulation, standstill, etc.) unless they (the WTO, our new masters) make some kind of rule allowing it, and all the countries would have to agree on it.
They might if they can get their cut. Basically, in the WTO, government spending has become a tool of political aims, which the poor countries want the jobs from. After all, their wealthy folk say, we've (the US rich and the EU rich)
have gotten even more filthy rich off them for 20 years, according to the statistics, now they want their cut. So, cough up your good jobs. The crap jobs come later.
One of the best cartoons Ive ever seen on trade and related deals I saw yesterday on Richard Stallman's web site, its from 2004!