Two important stories on the economy recently: 1) The Senate Banking Committee recently had a hearing on the actions of JP Morgan Chase, which quickly turned into one of the most brazen displays of corporate deference I've ever seen in my life by the GOP. Article about it here Jon Stewart had a great segment on it last night: <object width="512" height="288"><param name="movie" value="http://www.hulu.com/embed/iGEN1Xb4Vtp41DX-F0WYZg"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><embed src="http://www.hulu.com/embed/iGEN1Xb4Vtp41DX-F0WYZg" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="512" height="288" allowFullScreen="true"></embed></object> 2) Recent leaking of Obama documents from the Trans-Pacific trade talks reveals new political powers Obama's administration is planning to give multinational corporations. Article on it here Key point:
That's why it's called a stimulus. The idea of a stimulus is to prevent the free fall and stop the downward spiral and get it back to a positive spiral. That happened actually, it's just that the free fall before the stimulus was pretty much jumping off a 20,000 ft cliff. The hole was about 3 trillion dollars from the collapse. The stimulus was only 780 billion. It can't turn around everything. And a lot of the stimulus was investment oriented and tax cuts to the middle class. Republicans are right that tax cuts to the middle class do stimulate the economy because it stimulates spending. But tax cuts to the wealthy don't stimulate spending or investment, they stimulate savings and overseas investment since the wealthy just accumulate the excessive extra cash vs. spending it. And while that particular bridge probably doesn't do much long term, improved infrastructure does stimulate the economy. For instance, adding an additional lane on a highway allows people to get to work faster & saves gas (less traffic). That has too benefits beyond the workers hired to build the lane. You get an increase in productivity from the lower commute time. You get a higher standard of living from a lower commute time. And you have consumers and businesses spending less on oil which gives them more to spend on other things that stimulate the economy.
So what? it's irrelevant to the point being made (that the governmetn can't create jobs) - it clearly can, be they temporary or permanent. Frankly, all labor is temporary and could cease tomorrow. It's just an example, but actually we do...badly because falling bridges and crumbling roads is exactly what's happening. It's been pretty documented: http://business.time.com/2012/06/15/failing-u-s-transportation-infrastructure/ http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/engineering/rebuilding-america/4257814#slide-1 http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=...cWdxiEo8D7IIbbZUA&sig2=Y5oQ96MTi6tR_h-6FBEFvg edit: Here's a nice graphic: Let me also point you to exhibit B: I would say the virtual destruction of a major american city is a sufficient reason to augment infrastructure As for your contention that better infrastructure doesn't create long term growht - that's just dead flat wrong on so many levels. There's a huge demand for additional or better maintained. infrastructure in this country. And that's just the tip of the iceberg of public goods that we could deliver, but are not delivering; One of the highest correlations between school success is teacher-student ratio, yet teachers have been laid off en masse all over the country since 2008. I could go on..but these two things alone are compelling enough IMO. To think that the government is providing the maximum capacity of public goods (which have a side effect of making us all better off in the long run, especialy education) that can be delivered at the current time, in the wake of 10's of millions of public sector job cuts, is extremely naive.
To be fair, there are articles by highly, uh, impartial sources like Ann Coulter that take these same facts and skew them, but anyway... http://www.truthdig.com/eartothegro...taxes_deficit_and_spending_all_down_20120516/ Federal spending is lower now than it was when President Obama took office. I’ll pause to let you absorb the news. In January 2009, before President Obama had even taken the oath of office, annual spending was set to total 24.9 percent of gross domestic product. Total spending this year, fiscal year 2012, is expected to top out at 23.4 percent of GDP. Here’s another interesting fact. Taxes today are lower than they were on inauguration day 2009. Back in January 2009, the CBO projected that total federal tax revenue that year would amount to 16.5 percent of GDP. This year? 15.8 percent. One last nugget. The deficit this year is going to be lower than what it was on the day President Obama took office. Back then, the CBO said the 2009 deficit would be 8.3 percent of GDP. This year’s deficit is expected to come in at 7.6 percent. The fact is that Obama inherited a disaster of a federal budget. Eight years prior, when President George W. Bush took the oath of office, there was a $281 billion surplus. By the time Obama was sworn in, he was facing a $1.2 trillion deficit. Inconvenient though it may be for conservatives (especially those who are running for president), the truth is that spending, taxes and the deficit are all lower today than when President Obama took office.
Going off what Sam Fisher observed, the creation of the Federal Interstate Highway system is almost as important of an American economic event as the Great Depression. Infrastructure matters. It served as a major reason why the 19th century South was such a ****hole compared to the North, for example.
All of the above, all of the blame/deflections/spin/political affiliations aside, has this come anywhere close to happening? <object style="height: 390px; width: 640px"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/II-9Q-kExYo?version=3&feature=player_detailpage"><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"><param name="allowScriptAccess" value="always"><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/II-9Q-kExYo?version=3&feature=player_detailpage" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowfullscreen="true" allowScriptAccess="always" width="640" height="360"></object>
Everything in existence can be considered temporary if we want to break it down. That said, spending billions on building a research tool like a super conducting super colider creates construction jobs as well as helps society better understand reality and significantly helps develop new technologies. Just an example off the top of my head. Ok you can say I'm being far too anecdotal, but I just don't see bridges and roads collapsing or even close to collapsing. We need to maintain everything obviously and infrastructure budgets need to be increased because they have fallen behind. But we don't need some sort of massive revamp of American infrastructure. As short as 4 years ago we were ranked as the #6 infrastructure by the World Economic Forum. We are ranked #16 now since the deficit in infrastructure spending that you noted. I just don't see things as being that bad. Also, the levees were poorly designed by the Army Corp of Engineers. It was interesting reading about the levee failure right now. Are you wanting all of the i-wall and clay levees to be redesigned? The t-wall levee looks like the accepted solution but it is extremely expensive somewhere around 75-100 million a mile. To put that in perspective it would cost around 28 billion to upgrade the entire 330 miles of levees in the New Orleans district. There are other much less expensive solutions that would be as effective, but aren't being used. In fact, from what I am reading here http://www.stronglevees.com/traditional/#t there is a double wall design that would be 1/4th the cost of the t-wall design and is just as effective. Anyhow...interesting stuff and it would seem to point to wasteful govt spending as things stand. Education is a whole other issue and I feel the direction of K thru 12 education in America is dead wrong. More spending is not the solution to the issue. Texas is a prime example of that. 35% of state and local spending goes to education. It's by far the largest part of the budgets and the results have not been amazing. We need to recognize the problems within the American education system rather than just throwing money at it. It sounds great to just spend more on education, but we are just perpetuating a very flawed system. If we actually fixed how students are taught and how teachers teach then that could be a massive boom to the American economy over the next 20 years, but we aren't and sadly there are no signs of that changing anytime soon. BTW I have taken the time to try to figure out the reasons behind my failure in school and all of them point to a flawed education system that failed to help me properly develop my math, reading, and writing skills. So it's not like I am just b****ing and moaning about education spending. The spending is fine. What we are spending it on is not fine.
Robbie, you don't see bridges in danger of collapse because you simply drive over them, or they are in the countless locations that you never go to, and/or they haven't been recently inspected due to budget cuts. You don't see dams in danger of failure because you aren't (I assume) an engineer who specializes in the subject and is well versed in it. Seriously, all you have to do is a bit of research. Sam posted a nice image about it, but over the years, I've read numerous accounts of the danger this country is allowing its citizens to be put in by lack of infrastructure spending. Every once in a while, a dam fails. Look it up. One the dams of the Highland Lakes in Central Texas was discovered, in time, to be in great danger of failure. It was repaired in time, but there could have been a catastrophe. Look it up. In the Midwest, a bridge over a river that was a part of the Interstate Highway System failed, dropped into the water, and numerous people were killed and injured. Look it up. Do you know what is really wrong with this country when it comes to this topic? Complacency.
Of course a supercollider provides an economic stimulus effect. Youll get no argument from me. You would get an argument from current mainstream GOP thinking that it doesn't - which is absurd. I would argue that the ROI probably isnt as good asbuilding badly needed new infrastructure projects. Anyway on infrastructure : We have the consensus from pretty much everybody who studiesit that American infrastructure -bridges in particular -are badly in need of repairs and butyou just "don't see it"? Uh ok. Does this refresh your memory at all? http://m.youtube.com/watch?desktop_uri=/watch?v=LUulELs-Bmw&v=LUulELs-Bmw&gl=US
I was looking it up and all signs seemed to point towards our infrastructure being relatively strong up until the past few years. I did agree with Sam's information that spending for it needs to be increased to the level it was at. I didn't realize it was only at 1.6% of GDP. Bumping it to 2% would be a good baseline to never drop below. All I'm saying is I just don't see the evidence of us needing a massive road repair effort and those global infrastructure ratings (whatever their worth is) didn't seem to point to that either as late as 2008. Also, what I meant was you don't hear stories of roads collapsing very often in America. The only times I can really remember major road destruction are due to earthquakes, floods, or sinkholes.
You should read up on that bridge collapse. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I-35W_Mississippi_River_bridge It's kind of interesting. It was known to be structurally deficient for a long time and on top of that it's design was sub-standard. There was talk of condemning the bridge before it collapsed due to fear of collapse. Also, there are questions as to if the black ice prevention system that was installed in the bridge 6 years prior to collapse might have actually aided in the collapse. Further, there was maintenance done on the bridge to stop cracking that was occurring that actually ended up WEAKENING the bridge. Also, the dead weight the bridge held increased by 20% over the years due to extra concrete that was laid on it in resurfacing. Lastly, the actual collapse didn't just randomly happen either. It happened when they were working on the bridge and had an extra 578,000 pounds of construction equipment on the weakest part of the bridge. Point being...it was a poorly designed bridge that was very closely watched. It didn't collapse because of lack of attention. It collapsed because it was badly designed and people made poor decisions with the bridge maintenance. And about the ROI on a supercollider or any sort of exotic sounding scientific projects....if you can make progress in understanding quantum computing, superconductivity, quantum gravity, mass, etc. then you would gain massive economic benefits imo. I think creating more govt. funded prizes for mathematics would also be of great benefit to society. Mathematics is the foundation of our understanding of everything and we are failing as a nation developing mathematics skills in our K-12 school. Just my thoughts on that.
