A Sadly Continuing Theme

Last Thursday, Krugman said:

The Erie Canal. Hoover Dam. The Interstate Highway System. Visionary public projects are part of the American tradition, and have been a major driver of our economic development.

And right now, by any rational calculation, would be an especially good time to improve the nation’s infrastructure. We have the need: our roads, our rail lines, our water and sewer systems are antiquated and increasingly inadequate. We have the resources: a million-and-a-half construction workers are sitting idle, and putting them to work would help the economy as a whole recover from its slump. And the price is right: with interest rates on federal debt at near-record lows, there has never been a better time to borrow for long-term investment.

But American politics these days is anything but rational.

Last Friday, Herbert said:

We can go to war in Iraq and Afghanistan, and threaten to blow Iran off the face of the planet. We can conduct a nonstop campaign of drone and helicopter attacks in Pakistan and run a network of secret prisons around the world. We are the mightiest nation mankind has ever seen.

But we can’t seem to build a railroad tunnel to carry commuters between New Jersey and New York.

The United States is not just losing its capacity to do great things. It’s losing its soul. It’s speeding down an increasingly rubble-strewn path to a region where being second rate is good enough.

The railroad tunnel was the kind of infrastructure project that used to get done in the United States almost as a matter of routine. It was a big and expensive project, but the payoff would have been huge. It would have reduced congestion and pollution in the New York-New Jersey corridor. It would have generated economic activity and put thousands of people to work. It would have enabled twice as many passengers to ride the trains on that heavily traveled route between the two states.

The project had been in the works for 20 years, and ground had already been broken when the governor of New Jersey, Chris Christie, rejected the project on Thursday, saying that his state could not afford its share of the costs.

True enough, in my mind.

We're forgetting that our nation was built on a whole lot of us and everything we've built needs maintenance.

Then I found an article from Jeffrey Sachs.  He had me hooked after this:

A recent bestseller, The World Without Us, describes how our built world would fall apart with stunning speed if humanity suddenly disappeared from the planet. New York’s subways and underground tunnels would quickly flood with water as soon as the pumps stop. The collapse of manmade structures above ground would soon follow. A scientist would classify the rapid collapse as another example of the second law of thermodynamics: Unless we invest high-quality energy to maintain order, increasing disorder (entropy) becomes inevitable.

That's the kind of principle (bolded) I can get behind.  Without maintenance, everything falls apart.

Of course, reading Jeffrey's solution makes me realize that he would be shouted down as a rational voice in today's teahadist world:

It’s time to push a long-run perspective, and not the vacuous one of cutting entitlements for the poor and working class, but a serious one of investing in human capital, infrastructure, technology, and the environment. The claim that Social Security and Medicare benefits need to be cut in order to balance the budget is absurd in an era when the richest percent of households now bring in around 25 percent of national income. Before cutting benefits for the poor and middle-class, the rich should first be required to pay in line with their vast incomes and wealth. That would be at least another couple percent of GNP, collected ideally through a steeply graduated consumption tax.

Emphasis mine.

The zombie greedheads will provide the overreaction...

Previous | Home | Next