Tag Archives: infrastructure

Reminding Us of the Obvious

President Obama made an important speech yesterday, focusing on economic policy.

Much of the coverage has focused upon his insistence that a robust economy grows “from the middle out” and not from crumbs “trickling down” from the 1%–that when the middle class lacks disposable income, otherwise known as the wherewithal to buy things, the economy stalls.

That should be obvious.

It was another “should be obvious even to an idiot” part of the speech, however, that most resonated with me.

We’ve got ports that aren’t ready for the new supertankers that will begin passing through the new Panama Canal in two years’ time. We’ve got more than 100,000 bridges that are old enough to qualify for Medicare. Businesses depend on our transportation systems, our power grids, our communications networks – and rebuilding them creates good-paying jobs that can’t be outsourced. And yet, as a share of our economy, we invest less in our infrastructure than we did two decades ago. That’s inefficient at a time when it’s as cheap as it’s been since the 1950s. It’s inexcusable at a time when so many of the workers who do this for a living sit idle. The longer we put this off, the more expensive it will be, and the less competitive we will be. The businesses of tomorrow won’t locate near old roads and outdated ports; they’ll relocate to places with high-speed internet; high-tech schools; systems that move air and auto traffic faster, not to mention get parents home to their kids faster. We can watch that happen in other countries, or we can choose to make it happen right here, in America.

Given the choice of representatives they have sent to Washington, I can only conclude that a significant number of voters are less concerned about crossing those aging bridges or driving on those crumbling roads than they are about what I do with my uterus. Despite the jingoism and “We’re number one” protestations, they really don’t care that wireless access,  citizens’ health and children’s education in other countries  far exceed ours.

Those of us who do care about such things–those of us who were raised to believe that part of our obligation as human beings is to leave a better world for our children and grandchildren–look helplessly at a Congress controlled by childish buffoons who seem to have only one goal: say no to anything this President wants.

We can debate forever whether this behavior is rooted in excessive partisanship, fear of change or the color of the President’s skin, but those who insist that they just have “policy differences” with the administration cannot cite “policies” that justify allowing America to disintegrate. I can attribute opposition to healthcare reform to policy differences (but not 39 useless votes to repeal it–votes taken in lieu of doing the nation’s business.) I can  understand different approaches to education reform. But what “policy” argument is there for allowing our roads and bridges to crumble? What “policy” prevents us from putting people to work repairing and updating our aging electrical grid?

Recessions cause all kinds of pain, but they also offer us an opportunity to fix things “on the cheap.” We will lose that opportunity because–thanks to gerrymandering and political gamesmanship– we have sent a group of bratty children  to Congress instead of thoughtful representatives who are willing to work for the good of this country’s future.

A genuine opposition party picks its battles. It doesn’t throw a tantrum and scream “no” no matter what is put before it. It doesn’t block administration nominees or initiatives simply because it can, without regard for their merits.

We are at a crossroads. We can emerge from this toxic time a better, more mature America, or–as seems increasingly likely–we can go the way of other empires. Down.

Wherever we go, we evidently won’t be able to take our roads and bridges to get there.

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Invisible Infrastructure

When we hear the word “infrastructure,” most of us think of highways, bridges, airports, water mains….the physical apparatus built and paid for with tax dollars. And that’s accurate–so far as it goes. But most of us fail to recognize both the extent of the “public goods” we support and how essential they are to private enterprise.

In a recent issue of PA Times, the publication of the American Society for Public Administration (yes, I am a nerd), a contributor forcefully made the point that citizens are generally uninformed about the public goods they enjoy, and especially oblivious about how dependent they are on those goods. This expansive infrastructure is the “ecosystem” that supports commerce and business activity as well as our quality of life.

Elements of that ecosystem include clean air, clean public water supplies, street lights, food and drug safety, 911 services, police and fire protection, sewers and wastewater treatment facilities, interstate highways, education, national defense, a currency system, weather forecasting, disaster relief, registration systems for property, births and deaths, libraries, basic research and development, jogging trails, public parks, insurance of bank deposits, air traffic control, airports….the list goes on and on.

There is another “infrastructure” that makes civilization possible–the intellectual contributions of those who have gone before us. Today’s science and technology build on the discoveries of scientists long dead. We learn (okay, mostly we fail to learn) from the histories that have been recorded. We learn from research into the nature of our environments, both physical and social, and into experiments that have succeeded and failed. Etc.

I suppose it’s human to minimize the immense debt we owe to those who have provided the assets upon which even the most “self-made” build. But candidly, I find the preening “look at what I did all by myself” folks pretty insufferable.

And I find those who are unwilling to support that infrastructure, unwilling to “pay their dues,” immoral.

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Once Upon a Time

I just saw a report about a recent interview with Bob Dole, in which he reportedly said he could not have been elected in today’s Republican party.

Not much later, I opened a book I brought with me—It’s Even Worse Than It Looks, by Thomas Mann and Norman Ornstein (the latter someone I used to regard in the 1980s as extremely conservative)—and read the following:

[H]owever awkward it may be for the traditional press and nonpartisan analysts to acknowledge, one of the two major parties, the Republican Party, has become an insurgent outlier—ideologically extreme; contemptuous of the inherited social and economic policy regime; scornful of compromise; unpersuaded by conventional understanding of facts, evidence and science; and dismissive of the legitimacy of its political opposition. When one party moves this far from the center of American politics, it is extremely difficult to enact policies responsive to the country’s most pressing challenges.

 Last night at dinner, the lovely Swiss couple at our table for the first time gingerly broached that “third rail” of conversational amity, politics. They spend four months of each year in south Florida, where their son lives, and it has become obvious during the course of the cruise that they travel extensively.

The dinner discussion was triggered by reports of the bridge that had collapsed in Washington State; they wondered why Americans resented paying taxes that are necessary—among other things—for the maintenance and repair of infrastructure. When we didn’t bristle or become defensive—we agreed that allowing bridges and highways to disintegrate was incomprehensible behavior—they shared their distress over what they see as the appalling rancor, partisanship and short-sightedness of the current Republican party.

I remember when most Republicans were fiscal conservatives and social liberals—when fiscal conservatism meant paying for the wars you fought, and a commitment to limited government meant–among other things–keeping the state out of your bedroom and your uterus.

The next time I hear some yahoo in a tri-corner hat insisting that he “wants his country back” (presumably from the black guy in the White House, and the gay activists and uppity women who think we’re all entitled to equal rights), I’m going to tell him (sorry, but it’s always a him) that I want my party back.

Someone ought to sue the people who currently call themselves Republicans for unauthorized use of the name.

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Urban Life and Political Strife

Every couple of weeks, I get an email from Citiwire.net, a brainchild (I think) of Neil Pierce, the longtime observer of urban life and policy. Each email has two columns, one from Pierce and a second that “rotates” among a variety of writers. (Those of you interested in–or passionate about–cities should sign up. It’s free.)

Last Friday’s edition included a piece from Curtis Johnson, identified as the President of Citistates Group, commenting on a very prominent article from the previous week’s New York Times headlined “Republicans to Cities: Drop Dead.”

Johnson–who noted that he had worked many years for a Republican governor–said he cringed “to see the way sensible economics has been chained up, locked out and hooted over by the reigning ideology of today’s Republicans. Not that the Democrats are much better. A dear colleague of mine says ruefully that the Democrats don’t have very good answers, but Republicans don’t even understand the questions (and he’s Republican).”

Johnson goes on to report what most people who follow urban policy already know: as baby-boomers age, a huge number of them are abandoning suburbia and moving back into the cities, while the “millennials” already prefer urban life. (He shares a ‘factoid’ of which I was unaware–millennials are the first modern generation showing a decline in automobile ownership.)

Despite the increasing move to the cities–a move amply documented by demographers–those cities are struggling. Infrastructure is crumbling. Mass transit is lagging (or, as in Indianapolis, virtually non-existent). “Things that metro regions used to be able to build in a decade now take 30 to 40 years.” Yet policymakers of both parties give short shrift to these problems.

Johnson ends by pointing out something I’ve known ever since I got married, because it is my husband’s most persistent gripe: We rely upon our cities to generate the profits that pay the nation’s bills. Here in Indiana, certainly,  tax revenues generated in Indianapolis don’t stay here–along with the other cities in Indiana–South Bend, Ft. Wayne, Evansville–we pay the lion’s share of the state’s bills. We fund the priorities of Indiana policymakers–priorities that rarely include us.

It behooves us to take better care of the goose that is laying that golden egg.

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The Buffet Rule and the Self-Made Myth

Predictably, the Buffet Rule–which would have raised tax rates on those making a million dollars or more a year–failed for lack of the 60 votes needed to break a Republican filibuster. The GOP defended its position as necessary to encourage entrepreneurship and job creation, despite literally mountains of data disproving the link between lower taxes and economic prosperity.

It may be instructive to consider a couple of observations from a new book written by Bill Gates Senior. It’s titled “Self-Made Myth.”

In the book, Gates explains that Bill Jr. could not have built Microsoft without the United States’ publicly-supported infrastructure, tax laws, government-funded scientific research, public education and patent protection.

The book cites a number of other successful entrepreneurs who readily acknowledge their immense debt to the broad-based, publicly-financed goods our society offers, from the roads over which they ship their goods to the police and firefighters who maintain public safety.

A foreign student of mine once observed that there are plenty of bright, entrepreneurial people in third-world countries who cannot succeed on the scale Americans can, precisely because they lack those public goods, and because the absence of our extensive but largely taken-for-granted public infrastructure prevents the development of a middle class with the wherewithal to purchase their products. Market-based economies require–duh!–markets.

The question we face right now is what happens if we continue down the reckless path we seem to be traveling, a path that promises–among other things–to eliminate or vastly reduce the American middle class?

Ironically, in their zeal to avoid even moderately higher taxation, their unwillingness to repair or improve our crumbling infrastructure, their attacks on the public servants who provide security and education, the wealthiest Americans and their apologists and courtiers run a significant risk of killing the goose that makes their golden eggs possible.

The reality, as Neil Pierce has recently noted, is that government has been an indispensable player in developing America’s prosperity, from the early canals to our transcontinental railways, great dams to the interstate highway system, the first telegraph lines to the government-funded research that led to the Internet. It’s equally true at the local and state level, from public schools for all to our great public universities, the first minimum wage and workplace safety laws.

None of these public goods are free. They are an investment, and over the years, they’ve generated a remarkable rate of return in general prosperity and in all of those “self-made” men.

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