U.S. Infrastructure Deteriorating

Apparently, they give a lot fewer D-pluses than D-minuses. It's not a grade they like to give out, I'll tell you that right now.

 

You're not proposing to give the wealthy other people's money, are you? That would really be Xtian....

 

Back to the topic at hand...

I remember hearing of this as a problem as far back as the early 90's so as much as I like to bash, I don't think this is really a liberal/conservative issue.

The fact is that most of the current US infrastructure was built around the same time - during the great urban renewal push of the 50's and 60's. It's natural that it should all wear out at about the same time.

Infrastructure also falls under the classic psychological problem of the commons in that everybody has access, but nobody has ownership.

Furthermore, politicans in reality never make genuine plans that take more than 2 - 4 years to come to pass. Bush's whole land on mars thing? I guarantee you that that was just to keep the space geeks happy.

When people start to die from infrastructure failure, then politicians will do something about it. To expect otherwise doesn't seem realistic to me.

 

I doubt it
The modern government will be of the mind
that someone in the private sector
[some corporation] should do it and get paid for it
and if they
rape and pillage and go over budget and charge people
exhorbant amounts. . .well it is just the law of Supply and Demand

Those who cannot afford Water Corp's clean water
and to drive on Toll Corp's road. . . .well . .that is just
too bad

Rocket River

 

I remember hearing of this as a problem as far back as the early 90's so as much as I like to bash, I don't think this is really a liberal/conservative issue

Should maintaining roads etc be a conservative/liberal issue? Probably not; Eisenhauer built the interstate.

Ottoman, the powertful conservative anti-government theme as the central mechanism for reducing taxes on the well off was totally in vogue back then, too. Remember Reagan? Remember "read my lips"? from Bush I. Clinton did little to reverse the trend. Bush II was desperate to give away the government surplus, partly because people were talking about what government projects it could be used for.


When you have powerful monied interests constantly proclaiming the myth that government can do no good so that they can get large tax breaks, who have "starve the beast" as their plan, so there is no available tax money, you have gone well beyond the law of the commons phenomena.

I do like your law of the commons theme. I had forgotten that. I agree that it is a very powerful explanation of many soicial phenomena. That this comes into play on infrastructure development and maintenance is well known and is overcome by more far sighted societies not in the throws of mindless hatred of government spending. Our country used to be one of them and other countries are still there..

 

A $1.6 trillion capital spending project. All infastructure with benefits to business, energy companies, land developers, construction co's. etc.

Isn't this the kind of megaproject the 'conservative' generally covet? I think the republicans would truly love to be signing those cheques, but can't figure out a way to pay for it, and maintain their current commitments and tax cuts.

I think our ideological partisan bashing would be more appropriate in a discussion about social security, or health care. Here it's more a matter of priorities. How critical is it? How much would it costs? When does it have to be done? I think both sides of the aisle would strongly support these initiatives - it's just a matter of where they put it on their to-do list.

Do you think the Bush-bashers would be celebrating an announcement of a mega-buck upgrade to power tranmission systems, or would they be googling to see how much money the energy companies gave to the Bush campaign?

 

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/901963.stm

That is a link to a BBC story, which details a similar problem in Russia. It places an interesting balance of blame on Capitalist Russian & Communist Soviet isssues.

I do agree that the Bush administration has been leaving the states high and dry as far as pulling away funding, but I would suggest that one look at the states and the tobaco lawsuits. A miniscule portion of them are actually using the setlements for their stated purpose of funding anti-tobaco programs.

The funds are, in the vast majority of cases, simply being put into patching up general spending deficits. Spending money on tobacco prevention is simply too long term of a issue, and the funds too tempting.

 

Let's ignore the obvious.

A generation of preaching that government can do no right. . A nation in control of people who have spent their lives in liberatarian or conservative think tanks, that preach "starve the beast" , who systematically deprive the government of money. Let's try as hard as possible to make the case that this movement, its anti-government attitude and deliberate unwise tax cutting at both federal, state and local levels has nothing to do with declining infrastructure of the type typically paid for by governments, federal state and local.

However, is there some way around these folks so we can rebuild the infrastructure?

Maybe we could deals such as the following with the anti-government haters. Let's reduce food stamps, childhood nutritition programs, mental health funds and the like by $200 billion and then we can increase infrastructure spending by $180 billion. The remaining 20 billion "saved" can be another tax rebate for the $300,000 plus per year crowd. In addition promise any libraries, roads, etc. built must be toll roads or facilities with stiff user fees, no break for the low income crowd, as this would sap their moral fiber and also be class warfare.

If this isn't enough to interest the anti-s, we could privatise all government supervision of the projects, such as planning commissions, highway commissions, government inspectors and let out bids for these services to campaign contributors of the elected government haters, since they only hate government when it doesn't line their pockets.

 

You know what happens when the government is allowed to run buck wild with an infrastructure project? The big dig, that's what.

 

So instead you advocate for cessation of infrastructure projects altogether? I guess you would just like to see our roads, bridges, rails, sewer and water lines, and other infrastructure just decay to nothingness.

You would be better served advocating for better oversight of these projects than for ending them altogether.

 

Actually, I think the big dig is proof that unfortunately, states are really crappy at many things. It's violates a fundimental principal of states rights, but these massive projects should be overseen federally, although there may be some jurisdiction because the project involves an interstate highway. Also, that all contractors suck.

I've got an idea that would satisfy the defence hawks - massively expand the Army Corps of Engineers and put them in charge of management/oversight of infrastructure projects. They've made their mistakes in the past (see Mississippi River) but generally I respect them about as much as any subset of the Army. They'd get crap done and wouldn't let contractors get out of line.

You could then fix the infrastructure by expanding the defense budget. Everybody wins

 

Something occured to me. You folks (Deckard being folksy!) know how this country, for the last several generations at least, has stood for free trade? That free trade, the free movement of goods between markets, with little or no tariffs, boosted economies, and the suffering of those workers hurt by it is balanced by the creation of new jobs, new industries, and so on?

Well, aren't the highways that this country is seemingly joined together with, Ike's Interstate system, which he insisted should be free for all our people to use, being the best example of that... isn't it very much like free trade?

Isn't Bush's fixation, and we're seeing it in Texas today, isn't it the opposite of free trade? Isn't this push for tolls going to do the same thing tariffs do to international trade, but in our own country? Won't the cost added to the movement of our citizens and the transport so vital to business have a negative impact on our economy? It certainly does on our freedom of movement.

Are the days of hopping in your car and taking off for a trip, just for the hell of it, or for a vacation, or for business, soon to be a cherished memory? If this trend continues, I would say an emphatic yes. You won't be just worrying about the cost of gas... you'll be worrying about the cost of tolls as well.



Keep D&D Civil!!

 

As someone who has worked on infrastructure projects I think I can answer a few questions.

While most infrastructure is technically states responsibility the Fed. has a hand in almost all of it. In terms of highways the Fed considers how things that connect up to the interstate which is why things like the 610 loop that never leaves TX is considered an interstate. Further Fed. funds end up in all sort of transportation projects through direct funding or local government aid. Generally bringing home the bacon for local transportation projects has been a big favorite of Congressmen, with the exception of the Texas representatives.

The building of the interstate system was justified as defense spending under the rationale that we needed a nationwide automobile transit system to move troops and resources in the event of attack. Also a lot of infrastructure is funded on the basis of economic development.

As far as the deterioration of infrastructure today I agree this is a problem where blame can be spread pretty broadly. When Clinton came to office in 1993 he originally wanted an economic stimulus bill that would've done a lot of infrastructure repair but had to drop it to deal with controlling the deficit. Unfortunately infrastructure spending never was considered seriously again in the CLinton Admin. while the current Admin has been more concerned with tax cuts, stem cells and a couple of wars.

Saddly I'm begining to think we're going to need a big disaster like a bridge collapsing to turn this into a serious issue.

 

Not at all, I just don't want to turn the government loose with some huge, omnibus infrastructure bill because they can quickly and easily let things get out of hand. Instead of looking at the infrastructure as a whole, we need to examine every stretch of road, bridge, overpass, and tunnel, and determine where repairs/upgrades are most urgently needed, using a panel of engineers, not politicians. From there, we start working on the things that put lives at risk without attention. Toll roads are another possibility, where the road pays to maintain itself.

The roads don't get fixed for free. If the tolls are set correctly, then it just allows people to see exactly how the road is being paid for, instead of just having a line-item on the budget that says:
INFRASTUCTURE - $1,600,000,000,000

Tolls would be helpful in making sure that the money goes where it is supposed too instead of having some congressman trade a vote on some other issue for a bit of highway pork.