How would infrastructure spending benefit the working class?

[ironchef]

BTW, where did roads come from? A lot of the infrastructure I heard was "tech infrastructure" as in providing broadband internet across the entire country. Also mass transit (badly needed). I don't think I have heard a single person mention "roads". I could be wrong.

drcha, here is your answer, unemployed coal miners can build tech infrastructure, providing broadband internet across the entire country. Just kidding.

Seriously, no matter my political leaning, I believe building infrastructure is the right thing to do for the future. So, I support Mr. Trump on this initiative. We won't be as prosperous if our forefather did not build railroads, subways, freeways, airports.... Our crumbling infrastructure needs investment, no argument there.

Cheers.

 

[piezoe]

BTW, where did roads come from? A lot of the infrastructure I heard was "tech infrastructure" as in providing broadband internet across the entire country. Also mass transit (badly needed). I don't think I have heard a single person mention "roads". I could be wrong.

The single most important infrastructure component of any country is the educational level of its population. But that's very long term pay-off, so it isn't a project with great visibility in just four years.

We should pay Mississippi to secede. If Mississippi left the Union, the average education level of the New 49 State Union would rise. In fact, all it would take is for Phil Bryant, Governor of Mississippi, to move out of the country. I would say Haiti would be a good place for him, but that would be a pretty mean thing to do to Haiti.

 

[piezoe]

Some places get fibre-to-node then use existing copper to the premises (bottle neck),

That's what we have in Mississippi where I live. comcast is faster but less reliable. goes down often in the middle of the day.

Much of the country's older cities have aging water and sewer systems with many problems.

 

[Maverick74]

The single most important infrastructure component of any country is the educational level of its population. But that's very long term pay-off, so it isn't a project with great visibility in just four years.

We are in agreement with that. Although I'm not sure I would file education under infrastructure but the infrastructure money would be better spent on education.

 

[piezoe]

We are in agreement with that. Although I'm not sure I would file education under infrastructure but the infrastructure money would be better spent on education.

If the general educational level of the population is above average for developed nations the physical infrastructure should more or less take care of itself.

Here is an example of what I mean by that. During Katrina New Orleans suffered practically no wind damage have received only a glancing blow. It was the Mississippi Gulf coast inward to about 200 miles that really took a beating. Whole towns were wiped off the map (Bay St. Louis and Bay Waveland, and 1800 people in Louisiana and Mississippi were killed.) In New Orleans a levy protecting the city from lake Pontchartrain failed, and that is what flooded the city. That lake levy is an important part of New Orleans infrastructure. And that levy had been leaking for at least thirty years. Residents in the vicinity had called the city numerous times to report the problem. The Governor of Louisiana, at one point, requested Federal dollars to fix the levy. She said she was turned down. The levy continued to leak for more years and finally gave way. Now if that leaking levy had been in Iowa or Minnesota and the Governor had asked for Federal help to get it fixed and had been turned down, they would have kept on asking until something was done. Probably the levy would have been fixed within a year or less. But because that leaking levy was in New Orleans, they never got around to fixing it, and the result was billions of dollars lost. After the damage was done, the Federal and State governments stepped in and spent billions, fixing the Levy, replacing the rotten Huey P. Long Bridge over the Mississippi, replacing the causeway over the Lake, and beefing up New Orleans' storm water pumping system. It took a Katrina to get action. It wouldn't have taken a Katrina in Iowa. This has everything to do with the general level of competence in government. In Iowa it is high. In Louisiana, and particularly in New Orleans, it is low. (A Jury convicted, Ray Nagin, the Mayor of New Orleans at the time of the Levy beach, on 20 counts of bribery, conspiracy, wire fraud and filing false tax returns.)

 

[java]

United States has free public education for all children.

 

[piezoe]

United States has free public education for all children.

Os course it is not free. And it is not nearly as good as it could be.

 

[java]

Os course it is not free. And it is not nearly as good as it could be.

It's the best in the world if you don't count predominately black and hispanic inner city schools. It's free to the kids, don't nitpick. We spend more than most, spending more won't improve. But I agree, a well educated population is the foundation for economic prosperity.

 

[DTB2]

It's the best in the world if you don't count predominately black and hispanic inner city schools. It's free to the kids, don't nitpick. We spend more than most, spending more won't improve. But I agree, a well educated population is the foundation for economic prosperity.

Everything is free to the kids, they don't work.

 

[BearRunner]

spending more won't improve. But I agree, a well educated population is the foundation for economic prosperity.

Spending more in the CORRECT way has demonstrable returns of a higher level of education. The problem with a CAPITALIST system delivering services for PUBLIC benefit, financed from the PUBLIC purse, is that someone is always pushing for more PROFIT margin. This results in LESS services provided per $ of public money.

Just as 1 example demonstrating this - School lunches. In the US there has been a drift towards processed foods which are cheap to provide but allow a nice profit margin, in the EU lunch programs provide a much more nutritious food program using whole foods and healthy meal plans (along with nutrition education to the student to help set them up for life and has flow on benefits for health care) and it cost the SAME per head! In BOTH cases, the PUBLIC are paying for each program but in the EU program, they are getting VALUE for PUBLIC money. In the US program, the public is paying a PROFIT margin to a private interest and not getting value for public money (This isn't addressing the issue of US schools penny pinching from one program to fund another program which is a problem also).

As you said, a well educated population is the FOUNDATION for economic prosperity. Yet in all sort of ways we sabotage that FUTURE foundation so that some private interests is gaining the benefit from the PUBLIC money. Public money spent on these programs is supposed to be an INVESTMENT in all our futures. As these kids grow and enter the workforce, they contribute back into the system that helped them. But when we have a system that skims all the money out of these PUBLIC financed services, these PRIVATE interests reap the short term profit and steal all the benefit that was supposed to be gained by the public with this type of investment.


You are right in saying spending more won't improve it. We need to reassess the whole system that has been allowed to grow up around PUBLIC spending and ensure ALL that public money is actually delivered in services to the public, not as profits to a private interest.