We always seem to have plenty of money to waste on pointless wars, or to give away to 3rd world countries. But here in the USA, our own infrastructure is crumbling, and “we can’t afford to fix it”. What happened to looking out for yourself first? It is not USA/NATO’s job to police the world.
I guess it depends on who ‘we’ are. In my neck of the woods there are a huge number of road construction projects going on right now (it’s a big pain in the ass too, as it has a rather negative effect on traffic). In addition, there are a bunch of simultaneous projects going on running fiber everywhere, and the effect of that is already being felt in higher bandwidth speeds being offered by the various providers.
So, if the infrastructure in your area is crumbling and there are no projects to fix or patch it then I suggest you vote in some folks who will do that. It has little or nothing to do with giving money to 3rd world countries or ‘pointless wars’ and more to do with how your local representatives allocate funds for local infrastructure.
Currently we spend about 3.3% of our GDP on infrastructure. Could you find me a cite to compare to how much we spend on foreign aid and Afghanistan/Iraq?
Regards,
Shodan
You spent about 500,00 lives in Iraq.
The OP’s complaint is about identical to what I heard back in the 1970s. Surely we must be spending on infrastructure, or wouldn’t everything have collapsed by now?
I’m not 100% sure I’m going to trust Forbe’s cherry picked figures. They don’t seem to agree with theSenate Budget committee’s cherry picked figure of 2%.
As for the cost of the wars – it looks like it peaked at about 1.2% of GDP with defense in general taking up around 4.3%. (There are apparently other costs not included; ironically that probably includes rebuilding infrastructure in those countries.) Given the results of those conflicts (essentially none), I’d rather have had the equivalent in bridges, schools, and public sanitation projects. But that’s just me.
Well, as one document I quickly skimmed pointed out, the levees in New Orleans fall under the aegis of “infrastructure”. I think you can argue that they quite dramatically collapsed during Katrina. Don’t know what the cost of the clean up was, but repairing them in advance would certainly have been a penny’s worth of prevention.
They didn’t, afaik, collapse because of poor repair but instead because they were essentially not adequate to the flooding they got (i.e. the water was higher than the levees, and once water started flowing over the top it quickly undermined them and caused them to collapse).
I’m sure that both figures are cherry-picked - perhaps no more than the estimate given by the American Society of Civil Engineers. It is human nature to over-estimate just a bit when asked the question “how much money should I give you?”
Regards,
Shodan
You can’t look at the absolute number of projects, but rather the list of things that need to get done versus what is getting done. We had some done near me, thanks to the stimulus package, which were a pain when underway, but are really helpful now that the economy here recovered and traffic has increased.
The Fed pay for a lot of infrastructure, so the federal budget is relevant. However I agree that the defense budget is irrelevant. ( The tiny foreign aid budget is really irrelevant.) Given that we can invest in these projects at very small interest rates, this is the perfect time. We can fund them through a gas tax increase, especially now. We hear that a small increase in the gas tax will crash the economy, but a giant increase in gas prices is quite acceptable.
Would help with jobs also. People in construction don’t need college degrees, and those are the people the worst off today.
I guess my point is we DO invest in infrastructure. Is it enough? Well, that’s certainly debatable (I’m good, btw, with spending money on infrastructure, new or repair). But the OP seemed to be stating that we don’t and that everything is crumbling away, and even if we are just limiting the ‘we’ to mean the US, it’s not true across the board.
I’m not sure that’s very helpful. There’s always an infinite number of things that need to get done, but only a finite amount of time and money. We have to prioritize. And that’s true for everything from a person, a family, a company, all the way up to a country.
You think they don’t? Only high value projects make it on the list in the first place, and of course the order depends on priority. But we run out of money long before we run out of high priority projects. And it not like the need for work is standing still. As our roads and bridges and dams wear out, new stuff goes on the list no matter how much people hate new taxes. Sorry, bridges are not going to hold off from collapsing just because Joe Shmo thinks his taxes are too high.
I guess I was charitable and read it as not doing enough, not not doing any at all. I assume the OP has been stuck in traffic behind infrastructure repair projects, some of which just have to start in the middle of rush hour.
When will we invest in infrastructure? When things are break and need to be fixed. Preventive maintenance might be good policy but it is bad politics. Right now, results need to be felt before the next election or else there is a chance that someone for the other party might get credit for the sacrifices made while you were in charge. Also when pointing to your set of accomplishments in office its hard to point to things that you prevented from happening.
As to when we should have spent on infrastructure, we probably should have done it when materials, labor and credit was cheap and the economy needed an sharp influx of demand, say 2008 to 2012.
True until cars and people start falling into rivers when bridges break. Then “sorry your husband drowned, Mrs. Smith, but we didn’t raise gas taxes by God!” doesn’t work all that well.
And while we’re better today, we still need demand. At least we got some infrastructure work back in 2009, though the Republicans are still screaming about it today.
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True until cars and people start falling into rivers when bridges break. Then “sorry your husband drowned, Mrs. Smith, but we didn’t raise gas taxes by God!” doesn’t work all that well.
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When the odds of Mrs. Smiths husband dying from a bridge collapse is equal to or greater than her husband falling off a ladder while changing a light bulb for the nag then it might be an issue.
Not to say we shouldn’t be maintaining infrastructure, but this is a pretty rare occurrence that I don’t think we need to go overboard on. Like I said, we DO invest in infrastructure…quite a bit, really, whether it’s 2 or 5 percent of GDP, that’s still a boatload of money. And I don’t begrudge any of it, since our infrastructure is definitely important both to our economy and to our citizens, who foot the bill for it and should get what they pay for.
Republicans scream about a lot of things (so do Democrats).
Just as soon as it is politically imperative to do so.
“Bridges” is not as sexy an issue as “War”, “Jobs”, or “what that Un-American creep the other side is running did once 40 years ago”
There’s a rather good documentary called**The Crumbling of America** from History Channel dated 2009.
Available from the usual sources.
I would say we’ll invest more in our infrastructure when politicians begin to think of it like replacing four bad tires on a car, rather than spending your kid’s college account to buy a Mercedes. The former is a pending emergency that must take precedence, while the latter would usually be a reckless splurge.