A nation's prosperity depends on it's infrastructure. Goods are shipped via their highways, railroads, harbors, and airports. Workers need good highways, bridges, and public transportation to get to work.
Unfortunately, our infrastructure has been largely underfunded for decades and it is decaying.
The U.S. population is forecast to grow by 100 million — a 30 percent increase — before the middle of the 21st century. And right now a nationwide transportation system built in the middle of the 20th century is falling apart.
There isn’t enough money to arrest its decline, and the public is largely oblivious to the need.
That was the general consensus Friday at a transportation conference that heard from Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood; ...
Although complaints about traffic congestion are commonplace, to the average consumer the transportation system appears to be working reasonably well. And, said several speakers at the conference hosted by Washington Post Live, the amount of money needed to restore and expand it is so enormous that few taxpayers can relate. ...
The American Society of Civil Engineers has estimated that an investment of $1.7 trillion is needed between now and 2020 to rebuild roads, bridges, water lines, sewage systems and dams that are reaching the ends of their planned life cycles. ...
As Congress grapples with taming a massive deficit, just keeping transportation funding at current levels has been heralded as a triumph. Though neither house has made public a written proposal, the House has talked of allocating roughly $45 billion a year, while the Senate number is about $54 billion.
Assuming they split the difference, that $50 billion a year is just 3% of what is needed! I suspect it will take more than that amount just to stay even with the decay.
Republicans keep beating the drum for smaller and smaller government. They tell us government can't do anything right or cheaply, so we must starve the beast and we will all be better off without our "huge" tax burden. Right. Large companies like GE, that rely on our infrastructure to move their goods and employees pay almost nothing in taxes. This is the Republican utopia, a crumbling, impoverished nation, BUT we will be able to brag about our ultralow taxes.
Contrast this to the left who points out that wages, materials, and money is dirt cheap right now so we could get a huge bang for our buck, plus put millions back to work, if we started a massive program to fix our infrastructure now. It would benefit this country for decades to come.
The Republicans refuse. They don't want the government involved with anything but national defense. They claim everything else can be run better and more cheaply if we just rely on capitalism and the free market system to make our lives better. So I guess we'll just have to wait for GE and Google and Amazon to build us new sewers, fix our bridges, and upgrade our subways.
Minimum requirement, fiber to the home
A faster internet would reduce the need for upgraded highways and bridges.
Posted by: horsec | October 15, 2011 at 05:43 PM