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The US has forgotten how to do infrastructure

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Re: The US has forgotten how to do infrastructure

#271

Post by [deleted] »

Mz wrote: post #232
sanderjd wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But you're also not working at a Starbucks or a Chipotle. This is what your parent was talking about: a lot of the jobs in our economy require physically being where your customers are.

I am aware that many jobs require physically being there. That is not at all what the reply to me said. I am a writer. I am quite poor. In fact, I am currently homeless. I have been bitching via blog here recently about my frustrations with the widespread attitudes that writers don't deserve to be paid dirt, never mind that people online expect good quality writing to be readily available on the internet. Somehow, th…

[deleted]

Re: The US has forgotten how to do infrastructure

#273

Post by TulliusCicero »

Jach wrote: post #245
TulliusCicero wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a self-inflicted problem though. Nobody put a gun to America's head and forced us to make our cities sprawl out. We collectively decided to do it that way because we thought it was better. And for a few things it IS better. But there are a whole lotta costs, too, with the top 3 being being actual financial cost, grinding on the faces of the poor, and making us fat.

It's probably not even a decision so much as a probable consequence of having a much smaller population and opening of new frontiers to settle over the course of the country's history, ending up today with about half the population spread across about the same total area, and not uniformly. What has been our decision is to respect individual and local preferences (NIMBYism) and to ignore certain infrastructure improv…

Sprawl IS a new phenomenon, though. We didn't see the kind of suburban sprawl that we see today until after WW2, when cars became THE way to get around. It became more and more dominant and entrenched as the interstate highway system developed.

Remember, we're talking about relative density within a metro area, not how close each metro area is to the others. If you look at cities that were more or less fully developed prior to WW2, like Boston, you find that they're more compact, as opposed to, say, LA or Phoenix.

That said, I don't think it's the only thing making us fat. But I do think it's one contributing factor.

Re: The US has forgotten how to do infrastructure

#274

Post by mschuster91 »

jk2323 wrote: post #135

An African government official visits Europe. There, a European government official invites him to his luxury home. The African is shocked. He asks "How can you afford such a house if you a just a government official?" The European says: "Look out of the window. can you see the bridge?" The African: "Yes" The European: "See, the government paid for two train tracks but the bridge has only one." The African says: "I u…

> The African says: "Look out of the window. can you see the bridge our taxpayers paid for?"

s/our/your and you have an explanation why many projects funded by the richer Western governments in any development country (no matter if Africa, Asia or Eastern Europe) tend to fail. Endemic corruption (and preventing it) is not very high on the radar of the funders, all the politicians are looking for when funding development projects is "we spent X US$/y % GDP in development aid", but unlike private charities which have to prove that they're not wasting money, there's no incentive in government-supplied monetary aid to check for efficiency.

Same goes for food or clothing aid - Europe just dumps excess (food) or waste (2nd-hand clothing, where the "cream" goes to Eastern Europe and the leftovers to Africa) onto developing countries without taking care to not destroy local industries. As a result, refugees come in, and most often those politicians allowing the ruinous exports in the first place are the first ones to complain about the refugees their very own actions caused.

It's sick.

Re: The US has forgotten how to do infrastructure

#275

Post by gozur88 »

arethuza wrote: post #62
rm_-rf_slash wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Count your blessings. Construction can be much harder in other countries for reasons beyond engineering and safety. Italy, for example, is a real estate developers nightmare. Every rock or patch of dirt has a decent chance of sitting atop an Ancient Greek or Roman ruin, and the process to ensure that construction won't damage any heretofore unknown ruins is agonizingly slow. It boils down to political power and cultu…

But that problem applies to a lot of places in Europe - a lot of projects in the UK need to have teams of archaeologists in place and stuff seems to get built here at a reasonable rate (OK mostly - around Edinburgh we've had one dubious tram project and a successful major bridge and railways being re-opened). The Crossrail project in London had over 100 archaeologists working on it: http://www.crossrail.co.uk/sustain…

To be fair, every so often you find a king.

Re: The US has forgotten how to do infrastructure

#276

Post by jimmyk »

PeterisP wrote: post #254
jimmyk wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>For simplification, let's say if one wants to run for president, they can only use whatever is in the FEC public coffers. What in particular would they not be allowed to use private money to do? Would individuals that aren't running be allowed to use private money to do those things?

Countries that have limits on pre-election advertising spending generally include any and all public advertising expenses in that - TV, newspapers, online media, billboards, public space, physical mail campaigns, sponsorship of events/teams/whatever, etc. Pre-election ads by other people is limited - small amounts per person are exempted, but you can't simply buy a $10k radio ad praising whatever candidate you like,…

>but you can't simply buy a $10k radio ad praising whatever candidate you like

Can I buy a $10k radio ad supporting some particular issue that the candidate also supports?

Can I buy a radio station and hire talk radio hosts that argue in favor of the candidate or issues the candidate supports?

>but in general the problem is somewhat solvable

I think that depends on what you count as "solvable". The systems which address the problem probably work better for some people and less well for others. Which people do you have reason to believe are beneficiaries of these systems, and what reason do you have to believe that?

Re: The US has forgotten how to do infrastructure

#277

Post by [deleted] »

superfx wrote: post #88
vmarsy wrote: post #79

> Yet France’s trains cost much less. Decades of expertise might be a reason here, France has the longest amount of (high speed rail miles / country area), and the non high-speed network is also huge. It's also possible that the monopoly of having only one, state-owned, railroad company (SNCF) let that company negotiate/choose better prices much more aggressively than if there was many companies. I don't think it was…

Funny thing is that the population of Texas is a little less than half that of France's (27 mil vs 66 mil), so the density differential isn't _that_ large, yet your point about the implausibility of 450 trains in Texas stands.

[deleted]

Re: The US has forgotten how to do infrastructure

#278

Post by TulliusCicero »

anovikov wrote: post #267
TulliusCicero wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a self-inflicted problem though. Nobody put a gun to America's head and forced us to make our cities sprawl out. We collectively decided to do it that way because we thought it was better. And for a few things it IS better. But there are a whole lotta costs, too, with the top 3 being being actual financial cost, grinding on the faces of the poor, and making us fat.

It was done for a very rational reason: making country more immune to a nuclear attack, especially the retaliation to its own nuclear attack (i.e. a nuclear attack that is coming in convenient time of day and week because you chose the time). It works perfectly to that purpose: it is whole lot better to keep all relevant population in separate houses with basements, with little combustible material around, than in mu…

Ah, that's a good point. Still, it seems the design pattern has outlasted the attitude that created it.

Re: The US has forgotten how to do infrastructure

#279

Post by kodablah »

vmarsy wrote: post #79

> Yet France’s trains cost much less. Decades of expertise might be a reason here, France has the longest amount of (high speed rail miles / country area), and the non high-speed network is also huge. It's also possible that the monopoly of having only one, state-owned, railroad company (SNCF) let that company negotiate/choose better prices much more aggressively than if there was many companies. I don't think it was…

Yet Dallas is still home to the longest light rail system in the world. The trains are not an issue, it's how decentralized the people are. The value is simply not there to justify the project in most people's eyes (and won't benefit most people).

Re: The US has forgotten how to do infrastructure

#280

Post by cmurf »

That's because income taxes on the wealthy are way too low, which incentivizes stuffing income into real estate, stocks, and bonds.

Earn a million dollars worth of either earned or unearned income, and you pay either (simplistically) 39.6% on earned and 23.6% on unearned income. That's too f'n goddamn cheap. It encourages peopel to pay that tax and put it into one of the above, rather than take the risk by starting or growing a business and taking a tax deduction for business expenses.

When the silent generation was in charge of things, income tax was never less than 75% for the top tax bracket, for over 40 years. And during that time there was massive private and public infrastructure being built, and we didn't have a $20 trillion national debt.

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