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>Nobody wants to build street lights or a subway station in the middle of an Iowa corn field, but reasonable infrastructure where people actually live is import
by gozur88 10y ago
>Nobody wants to build street lights or a subway station in the middle of an Iowa corn field, but reasonable infrastructure where people actually live is important.
Should people who live in that corn field pay for a rail system in DC?
>PS: America seems to have forgotten that infrastructure drives economic development. From dirt roads to high speed internet society's live and die based on past investments not what happens to rich or powerful people.
Infrastructure that make sense enables economic development. But not all infrastructure makes economic sense. Sure, you can stimulate economic growth in a place by pouring a bunch of money into it. But how much growth did you suppress in other places by taking money out?
- Retric 10y agoPeople in city's subsidize corn fields not the other way around. If you look at net tax flows rural areas get a ridiculously huge subsidy's. Things like the ever popular completely unneeded military bases. Or SS disability checks because someone has no job skills and can find a friendly doctor. Or how about: Between 1995 and 2011, the federal government paid $172.3 billion in commodity subsidies, $46.6 billion in crop insurance subsidies, $37 billion in conservation subsidies and $21.4 billion in disaster subsidies. Compare with the much hated bank/auto bailout which cost a net $21bn. Really, rural areas should love for city's to become more efficient so they can leach even more money from them.
- gozur88 10y agoIn my perfect world it wouldn't matter to the Iowans whether or not the cities grew because they wouldn't get any subsidies for their crops, which you really can't justify except by saying farm states have out-sized power in our political process. By the same token, regional and city-wide projects should built by the people who are going to benefit. There's no reason I should have had to pay for Boston's Big Dig, for example.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- Retric 10y agoThere are shared costs such as the US military making nationwide economic gains useful to everyone. Put another way Iowa would need to pay significantly more in defense if it was not part of a larger and more prosperous country.
- thatfrenchguy 10y ago> Should people who live in that corn field pay for a rail system in DC? Yes. The same way people living in DC pay for all the interstates they don't use next to corn fields.
- gozur88 10y agoThe people in DC certainly use those interstates. How do you think goods get to the cities?