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After months of delay, the House passes infrastructure bill

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Re: After months of delay, the House passes infrastructure bill

#71

Post by nickthemagicman »

rrss wrote: post #39
nickthemagicman wrote: post #31

I agree. I was affected by drunken bicyclist once. They hit my stroller and injured my baby. It's high time we mandated this kind of system on all human piloted systems. Bicycles, golf carts, roller skates, etc. They should require a full breathalyzer test and full ongoing facial motion detection to ensure safe piloting of the vehicle. Safety first, always.

asshole move to mock someone’s experience with the impact of drunk driving with sarcasm. why don’t you try actually making an argument? I don’t really care about this either way, but unless you can point to statistics on deaths due to drunk bicycle riding, this is a stupid slippery slope.

How dare you sir!

I don't appreciate you mocking my child's injury.

Each year about 100 children are killed and 254,000 are injured as a result of bicycle-related accidents*

It's high time we banned these dangerous machines.

This bill does not go far enough if you ask me.

Have you ridden a bicycle while intoxicated sir?

* https://www.stanfordchildrens.org/en/topic/default?id=accide...

Re: After months of delay, the House passes infrastructure bill

#72

Post by rsj_hn »

netcan wrote: post #15

The $1trn headline makes me expect something to excite the imagination... A roman aquaduct wow factor. Something to marvel at. Am I being shallow? Does it make bad sense to cut a $100bn slice for something epic? A hypersonic monorail perhaps?

California high speed rail will run $100bn. If we're lucky. Is that sexy enough?

Re: After months of delay, the House passes infrastructure bill

#73

Post by rsj_hn »

ianai wrote: post #20
netcan wrote: post #15

The $1trn headline makes me expect something to excite the imagination... A roman aquaduct wow factor. Something to marvel at. Am I being shallow? Does it make bad sense to cut a $100bn slice for something epic? A hypersonic monorail perhaps?

It gives the DOE secretary a mandate and budget to commission projects for new, smaller nuclear plants (300MW). Unless that got removed…

This would be really cool! Unfortunately I have no idea how to even tell what's in this bill -- do you?

Re: After months of delay, the House passes infrastructure bill

#74

Post by rsj_hn »

adam_arthur wrote: post #50
ur-whale wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The $1trn headline makes me expect something to excite the imagination A country running out of money and going into hyperinflation via money printing ? Exciting enough for you ?

I'm definitely personally on the more hawkish side, re inflation. But this bill may help reduce longer term inflation if it's actually spent wisely. e.g. if port throughput/efficiency increases, we could process imports more cheaply. I'm not an expert on the bill, but the skew in the numbers seem a bit strange. Personally I think the cost should have been weighted much more heavily towards logistics/energy aspect of…

> But this bill may help reduce longer term inflation if it's actually spent wisely.

Absolutely! And it's a shame that the USG is using this type of cash-based accounting instead of depreciating long term assets like any other business.

At the same time, anything to do with infrastructure is so wasteful that I am always a little afraid whenever these infrastructure bills come up.

Good discussion here: https://www.wbur.org/onpoint/2021/08/02/why-does-infrastruct...

Re: After months of delay, the House passes infrastructure bill

#75

Post by rrss »

nickthemagicman wrote: post #71
rrss wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

asshole move to mock someone’s experience with the impact of drunk driving with sarcasm. why don’t you try actually making an argument? I don’t really care about this either way, but unless you can point to statistics on deaths due to drunk bicycle riding, this is a stupid slippery slope.

How dare you sir! I don't appreciate you mocking my child's injury. Each year about 100 children are killed and 254,000 are injured as a result of bicycle-related accidents* It's high time we banned these dangerous machines. This bill does not go far enough if you ask me. Have you ridden a bicycle while intoxicated sir? * https://www.stanfordchildrens.org/en/topic/default?id=accide...

it’s fascinating that you are apparently incapable of making any genuine, honest comment on this subject, and favor spewing continuous sarcasm.

Re: After months of delay, the House passes infrastructure bill

#76

Post by rsj_hn »

CalRobert wrote: post #12

This whole time I've been confused how investing more money in roads is compatible with our climate goals. Should we not trying to decommission roads and encourage people to move to denser, walkable and cyclable city centers?

> This whole time I've been confused how investing more money in roads is compatible with our climate goals.

It is compatible with our goal of getting from point A to point B safely. Climate goals are not the only goals, and if you look at this bill carefully, you'll see that they are quite secondary to other goals, which reflects the underlying political reality.

Re: After months of delay, the House passes infrastructure bill

#77

Post by mister_tee »

throwaway4good wrote: post #49

What exactly is in it? If you add up the numbers at the bottom of the article, it is only about 500B. Is the rest already already allocated infrastructure spending?

good catch; it's $550B in new spending and $450B of renewing infrastructure programs that were going to expire (or have expired since the bill has dragged on)

I don't know what the $450B is though, all the media focus and interest is on the new shiny stuff.

Re: After months of delay, the House passes infrastructure bill

#78

Post by netcan »

rsj_hn wrote: post #72
netcan wrote: post #15

The $1trn headline makes me expect something to excite the imagination... A roman aquaduct wow factor. Something to marvel at. Am I being shallow? Does it make bad sense to cut a $100bn slice for something epic? A hypersonic monorail perhaps?

California high speed rail will run $100bn. If we're lucky. Is that sexy enough?

Depends. How fast? How cool?

Re: After months of delay, the House passes infrastructure bill

#79

Post by nerdponx »

wolfram74 wrote: post #60
nerdponx wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

$100bn/year is still an astronomical amount of money.

100E9/300E6~=333 that's ~2 netflix subscriptions per US citizen. Outlandish!

Yes, everything at the scale of 300+ million people all seeking a comfortable modern living standard is outlandish. That's my point!

Re: After months of delay, the House passes infrastructure bill

#80

Post by ur-whale »

adam_arthur wrote: post #50
ur-whale wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The $1trn headline makes me expect something to excite the imagination A country running out of money and going into hyperinflation via money printing ? Exciting enough for you ?

I'm definitely personally on the more hawkish side, re inflation. But this bill may help reduce longer term inflation if it's actually spent wisely. e.g. if port throughput/efficiency increases, we could process imports more cheaply. I'm not an expert on the bill, but the skew in the numbers seem a bit strange. Personally I think the cost should have been weighted much more heavily towards logistics/energy aspect of…

> if it's actually spent wisely.

Precisely.

A spending bill is like any other kind of investment: for it to pay back, it has to be made carefully and thoughtfully, and must be watched over like milk on fire until it actually bears fruit.

That's what the private sector and private capital does best, because in that space, failure spells death.

For a govt, failure means nothing - to quote PT barnum - there's a sucker (or taxpayer in that case) born every minute. All you have to do is survive the next election cycle, and doing that these days has pretty much nothing to do with how well you actually invest taxpayer dollars and everything to do with how good a PR firm you hire.

Sadly, the US govt (like most govts) are neither good at investing nor at babysitting their investments: they are one of the most wasteful human organization on the planet, both unwittingly (bureaucracy and thousands of federal employees who serve no actual purpose whatsoever) and willingly (corruption and pork).

The trillion dollar that is being spent in this bill will neither improve the infrastructure of the country, nor go to the pockets of people who need it to help them lift themselves out of poverty.

It will just be wasted, like most of the rest of your tax money.

Oh, and - minor detail - it's a trillion dollar the government doesn't have.

It is therefore going to take on additional debt.

But, I mean, at this point who's counting anymore?

https://www.usdebtclock.org/

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