6 ms·

I wish the massive financial bailout money could be used to build and improve infrastructure. There doesn't seem to be a lack of money but it never seem to do a

I wish the massive financial bailout money could be used to build and improve infrastructure. There doesn't seem to be a lack of money but it never seem to do anything useful.

spaetzleesser 6y ago
Agreed. Instead of using cheap money to drive up asset prices it would be nice if it actually got used for something useful.
- roughly 6y ago
  This is because one of our two political parties doesn’t believe that government spending should exist, and is iffy about the concept of government overall. Because of that, the only body able to respond to crises is the Federal Reserve, and the only lever they have is the money supply. We’ve had multiple trillion dollars worth of infrastructure repairs we need to do and nearly sub-zero borrowing rates for the last decade, but the GOP has effectively blocked any efforts to enact any kind of actual fiscal policy. If any business out there’s leadership refused to take sub-zero rate loans to perform critical maintenance on their capital stock, they’d rightly be fired and probably sued.
  - donw 6y ago
    The GOP has no power in California, though, and that’s been true for over a decade.
    - mperham 6y ago
      California can't print more money, the Fed can.
      - CWuestefeld 6y ago
        The GOP has no power over the Fed, either.
        dragonwriter 6y ago
        > The GOP has no power over the Fed, either. The Fed Board are Presidential appointees and currently the board has four GOP members and one Democrat. The GOP controls the Fed.
      - dragonwriter 6y ago
        More to the point, California (both Constitutionally, and practically because of the market effect of being the issuer of the debt-denominating currency) borrow as freely and cheaply as the federal government.
    - dragonwriter 6y ago
      > The GOP has no power in California, though, and that’s been true for over a decade. The GOP could still block tax increases (including any tax rearrangement that included an increase in some aspect), because of the supermajority requirement, until the Senate class elected in 2018, which was significantly less than a decade ago.
      - donw 6y ago
        Unless I'm reading this[1] wrong, the California State Assembly has been a Democrat supermajority since 2011, and the Senate has been since 2013. Moreover, Democrats have only been one or two votes short of a supermajority in both houses since 1999. So, I still think my statement is fair, that the GOP has no effective power in California, and that has been the case for two decades. Where do I have it wrong? [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_party_strength_in_California https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_party_strength_in_Ca...
        dragonwriter 6y ago
        > Unless I'm reading this[1] wrong, the California State Assembly has been a Democrat supermajority since 2011, and the Senate has been since 2013. The relevant threshold is 27 (2/3 of 40 is 26.6...) seats in the Senate, 54 (2/3 of 80 is 53.3...) in the Assembly. So in 2011 neither house has a supermajority (and, prior to a State Constitutional Amendment in 2010, a supermajority was required to pass a budget with or without tax changes), in 2013 Dems had supermajorities in both Houses which they lost for the 2015 session in both Houses, regained in 2017 by the 2016 election in both Houses, lost in the Senate by a recall in mid 2018, and regained by the 2018 elections for the 2019 session. > Moreover, Democrats have only been one or two votes short of a supermajority in both houses since 1999. No, up to 2 in the Senate and 6 on the Assembly short; and up until 2010 that meant Republicans, while, they couldn't pass anything on their own obviously, had a veto on the annual budget which thhey regularly held hostage to extract other concessions. > So, I still think my statement is fair, that the GOP has no effective power in California, and that has been the case for two decades. It's not; they've had a veto on tax policy changes that aren't pure cuts intermittently, on at least one house (which is all it takes) over the last decade, and a veto over the budget consistently for the prior decade. Oh, and as well as a legislative veto on the budget they also held the Governor's office for much of that prior decade (the full years of 2004-2010), which gave them more power (especially because, unlike the President in the federal system, the Governor has a line item veto on the California budget.) So, no, they haven't been without power in California for two decades (or even the original claim of one, but its much more ridiculous to now claim two.)
  - TheOtherHobbes 6y ago
    Spending on infrastructure is Keynesian - genuinely Keynesian, not the faux-Keynesian of bailouts, which are often labelled Keynesian with various degrees of good/bad faith. Keynesianism is absolutely taboo in a plutocratic neoliberal economy - possibly because it's a credible reason for increasing taxation. And there's nothing a plutocracy hates more than having to pay more tax. As you point out, in rational terms this is self-harming nonsense. Countries need repairs and they also need physical infrastructure investment. The 50s saw the Interstate system, the 60s saw generous funding for computer and IT R&D as well as other basic science, but since Reagan public spending for the public good has become unacceptable - largely because it "costs money." As if creating jobs and valuable physical infrastructure is somehow an unreasonable expense and not basic common sense.
  - electriclove 6y ago
    Even when money is spent on infrastructure projects, it amazes me how long it takes to do the work as compared to some other countries.
grecy 6y ago
The former President of Zaire (now DRC), Mr. Mobutu is believed to have personally pocketed up to $15 billion which he stole from the country. He's widely believe to be the most corrupt leader of all time. Recently Trump flatly refused to disclose where $511 BILLION was allocated in taxpayer-funded COVID loans.[1] The scale of what's happening right now boggles the mind, and nothing is being done about it. [1] https://www.newsbreak.com/news/1582350022360/trump-administration-wont-say-who-got-511-billion-in-taxpayer-backed-coronavirus-loans https://www.newsbreak.com/news/1582350022360/trump-administr...
- arminiusreturns 6y ago
  It's worth noting this is a common tactic of the IMF... offer big loans to countries, as long as they let in outside companies to do business in their sectors, which causes lots of corruption and kickbacks... meanwhile, the problems that needed to be solved don't for the non-powerful locals, and now the country is in worse shape with corruption, and wealth inequality jumps while hvings massive amounts of debt. If that country tries to resist... well, I think people should read John Perkins books.
  - api 6y ago
    Sounds like what our own financial sector is doing here.
  - m463 6y ago
    When I read his books it seemed that the whole point was to indebt small countries to large ones so they couldn't be independent. But it's hard to figure out "whole point" because it might just be that's how all the individual interests play out and it's not a plan.
Apocryphon 6y ago
You'd think with the reduction in traffic there's all sorts of extra space and time for fixing old infrastructure.
- travisjungroth 6y ago
  The tourist street in Playa del Carmen, Mexico got tore up right at the start.
- wcarron 6y ago
  Personally, I have seen that happening on freeways around me. Less in side streets, but still, I've noticed an uptick in roadwork
- Rebelgecko 6y ago
  They've been doing this by me. LA Metro actually finished digging up the street for a subway station about 7 months ahead of schedule (which I think is practically unheard of) https://thesource.metro.net/2020/06/15/metro-completes-decking-for-planned-beverly-hills-subway-station-seven-months-ahead-of-schedule/ https://thesource.metro.net/2020/06/15/metro-completes-decki...
- foota 6y ago
  Unfortunately, I think this is countered by municipalities losing funding from sales taxes.
  - electriclove 6y ago
    California has gotten a windfall in sales taxes from Amazon and Ebay in recent years when sales tax collection was forced. The money is always poorly spent.
    - foota 6y ago
      I don't know in detail what California's budget is like (other than they've been in the whole lately?) But I personally view a lot of the issues with local and state government spending as being associated with bidding processes and the cost of e.g., infrastructure. I think California generally has the right priorities (roughly, education, healthcare, safety (although this could perhaps be reshuffled, see zeitgeist), and infrastructure). If anything I think they probably need to work to reduce costs in higher education especially and spend more on infrastructure (or reduce costs, but I think that'll be harder than in ed).
throw0101a 6y ago
> […] could be used to build and improve infrastructure. But what about Infrastructure Week? * https://www.npr.org/2018/05/15/611389675/why-its-infrastructure-week-again https://www.npr.org/2018/05/15/611389675/why-its-infrastruct... * https://www.cnn.com/2019/05/23/politics/donald-trump-infrastructure-week/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2019/05/23/politics/donald-trump-infrast... * https://theweek.com/articles/839005/all-infrastructure-weeks-ranked https://theweek.com/articles/839005/all-infrastructure-weeks... /s > There doesn't seem to be a lack of money but it never seem to do anything useful. Well, at the federal level, there are two chambers of Congress and the Executive. Given that there's an election coming up in November, you may wish to do vote for the folks that you best think will change the situation.
- EarthIsHome 6y ago
  > at the federal level, there are two chambers of Congress and the Executive. Changing anything for the benefit of the masses through electoral politics may never happen again or will be too slow. The last time two times the US had aligned executive and legislative branches were the first two years of the Obama and Trump regimes. So much changes between elections that there's no way we can fix it through electoral politics, and we must find another way. We cannot vote our way out of the immediacy of a pandemic or a constitutional crisis or an environmental disaster. Voting is just too slow help the masses.
  - onecommentman 6y ago
    There was an episode of Monty Python I remember. The premise was that in the late 1960s Hitler and his cronies, under assumed identities, were staying at an English boarding house in Minehead, Somerset planning "to get the band back together" via some local election. The TV audience could see through the ruse, but the other residents of the hotel were oblivious. The scene I remember was Mr Hilter ranting from a balcony to a few scattered locals. The bunting was red, don’t remember was the insignia was. As a local yokel was staring up blankly at Mr Hilter’s Germanic rant about the sovereignty of Taunton, Hilter’s crony, Ron Vibbentrop, sidled up to the yokel and, as an aside, told the yokel "He’s right, do you know that?" Don’t know why, but that just popped into my head...
jlmorton 6y ago
Much of the bailouts you're speaking of are loans, not grants. The very large exception is the Paycheck Protection Program, which will in most cases become grants to small businesses. Given the need to institute social distancing, this is the only thing which is keeping hundreds of thousands of small businesses alive. Without the PPP, and other loans to large businesses, we would be seeing tens of millions of permanent job losses. Much of this money was not spent, it was loaned. And without it the lasting economic effects would have been catastrophic. I too would like to see additional spending on infrastructure, and I think we can afford it, but I find myself frustrated to see it framed as bailout vs. infrastructure. These financial lifelines are meant to keep our economy treading water while we necessarily social distance. They're not to save corporations from excessive speculation.
awillen 6y ago
If only there were some precedent we could look to where huge numbers of people were out of work and the government killed two birds with one stone by employing a lot of them on major infrastructure projects. And what if those infrastructure projects, like improvements to roads, bridges and national parks, were largely outside and thus relatively safe even in today's climate of Covid-19. It seems like we might go into a depression... if only that had happened before and we could draw on those experiences instead of dithering and arguing while people can't pay their bills. Dare to dream, am I right?
- flukus 6y ago
  Problem is most unemployed people don't have the specialized skill set to contribute to these projects and those that do aren't unemployed. The unskilled labor these projects require has mostly been automated over the last 100 years by robotic tools like excavators. Basically every problem we used to be able to throw manpower at now has similar automation and the same sorts of projects would now be done by far fewer people. Any modern new deal would have to look very different to the old one.
  - awillen 6y ago
    I won't even pretend to know enough about construction/infrastructure to know what's required to work on it, but there have got to be jobs that can be created that don't require technical skills. I've been reading that lots of people are now going to national parks because other stuff is closed, and they're leaving lots of trash - hire people to pick it up. Roads have potholes, and I can't believe that fixing those requires that specialized of a skill set. And even for some of the things that are most efficiently solved with specialized skills and equipment, if there's a way to do them less efficiently by unskilled people, that's fine, since overspending on labor is totally fine if not desirable in this context.
    - tomschlick 6y ago
      > I can't believe that fixing those requires that specialized of a skill set. No but it does require manual labor and a lot of people consider it beneath them these days to do that. Couple it with many people getting paid more to be on unemployment than they made while working and its a recipe for laziness.
37474783rur 6y ago
Speaking as a socal Californian, infrastructure isn't the problem it's that most of the state hates confronting reality. We'd rather raise minimum wage arbitrarily than admit we have a CoL problem, we invest in bike lane expansions while leaving buses to fight cars for space in most parts of our cities because "omg bikes are so eco friendly and Europe does it", and for some reason we hate high density housing even though rent is on the rise everywhere. We were supposed to have expanded our energy infrastructure already to make more use of natural gas which might have alleviated the need for rolling blackouts but instead we of course chased green energy projects that let people in the politically connected affluent regions pat themselves in the back.

I wish the massive financial bailout money could be used to build and improve infrastructure. There doesn't seem to be a lack of money but it never seem to do anything useful.

spaetzleesser 6y ago

Agreed. Instead of using cheap money to drive up asset prices it would be nice if it actually got used for something useful.

roughly 6y ago
This is because one of our two political parties doesn’t believe that government spending should exist, and is iffy about the concept of government overall. Because of that, the only body able to respond to crises is the Federal Reserve, and the only lever they have is the money supply. We’ve had multiple trillion dollars worth of infrastructure repairs we need to do and nearly sub-zero borrowing rates for the last decade, but the GOP has effectively blocked any efforts to enact any kind of actual fiscal policy. If any business out there’s leadership refused to take sub-zero rate loans to perform critical maintenance on their capital stock, they’d rightly be fired and probably sued.
- donw 6y ago
  The GOP has no power in California, though, and that’s been true for over a decade.
  - mperham 6y ago
    California can't print more money, the Fed can.
    - CWuestefeld 6y ago
      The GOP has no power over the Fed, either.
      - dragonwriter 6y ago
        > The GOP has no power over the Fed, either. The Fed Board are Presidential appointees and currently the board has four GOP members and one Democrat. The GOP controls the Fed.
    - dragonwriter 6y ago
      More to the point, California (both Constitutionally, and practically because of the market effect of being the issuer of the debt-denominating currency) borrow as freely and cheaply as the federal government.
  - dragonwriter 6y ago
    > The GOP has no power in California, though, and that’s been true for over a decade. The GOP could still block tax increases (including any tax rearrangement that included an increase in some aspect), because of the supermajority requirement, until the Senate class elected in 2018, which was significantly less than a decade ago.
    - donw 6y ago
      Unless I'm reading this[1] wrong, the California State Assembly has been a Democrat supermajority since 2011, and the Senate has been since 2013. Moreover, Democrats have only been one or two votes short of a supermajority in both houses since 1999. So, I still think my statement is fair, that the GOP has no effective power in California, and that has been the case for two decades. Where do I have it wrong? [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_party_strength_in_California https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_party_strength_in_Ca...
      - dragonwriter 6y ago
        > Unless I'm reading this[1] wrong, the California State Assembly has been a Democrat supermajority since 2011, and the Senate has been since 2013. The relevant threshold is 27 (2/3 of 40 is 26.6...) seats in the Senate, 54 (2/3 of 80 is 53.3...) in the Assembly. So in 2011 neither house has a supermajority (and, prior to a State Constitutional Amendment in 2010, a supermajority was required to pass a budget with or without tax changes), in 2013 Dems had supermajorities in both Houses which they lost for the 2015 session in both Houses, regained in 2017 by the 2016 election in both Houses, lost in the Senate by a recall in mid 2018, and regained by the 2018 elections for the 2019 session. > Moreover, Democrats have only been one or two votes short of a supermajority in both houses since 1999. No, up to 2 in the Senate and 6 on the Assembly short; and up until 2010 that meant Republicans, while, they couldn't pass anything on their own obviously, had a veto on the annual budget which thhey regularly held hostage to extract other concessions. > So, I still think my statement is fair, that the GOP has no effective power in California, and that has been the case for two decades. It's not; they've had a veto on tax policy changes that aren't pure cuts intermittently, on at least one house (which is all it takes) over the last decade, and a veto over the budget consistently for the prior decade. Oh, and as well as a legislative veto on the budget they also held the Governor's office for much of that prior decade (the full years of 2004-2010), which gave them more power (especially because, unlike the President in the federal system, the Governor has a line item veto on the California budget.) So, no, they haven't been without power in California for two decades (or even the original claim of one, but its much more ridiculous to now claim two.)
- TheOtherHobbes 6y ago
  Spending on infrastructure is Keynesian - genuinely Keynesian, not the faux-Keynesian of bailouts, which are often labelled Keynesian with various degrees of good/bad faith. Keynesianism is absolutely taboo in a plutocratic neoliberal economy - possibly because it's a credible reason for increasing taxation. And there's nothing a plutocracy hates more than having to pay more tax. As you point out, in rational terms this is self-harming nonsense. Countries need repairs and they also need physical infrastructure investment. The 50s saw the Interstate system, the 60s saw generous funding for computer and IT R&D as well as other basic science, but since Reagan public spending for the public good has become unacceptable - largely because it "costs money." As if creating jobs and valuable physical infrastructure is somehow an unreasonable expense and not basic common sense.
- electriclove 6y ago
  Even when money is spent on infrastructure projects, it amazes me how long it takes to do the work as compared to some other countries.

grecy 6y ago

The former President of Zaire (now DRC), Mr. Mobutu is believed to have personally pocketed up to $15 billion which he stole from the country. He's widely believe to be the most corrupt leader of all time. Recently Trump flatly refused to disclose where $511 BILLION was allocated in taxpayer-funded COVID loans.[1] The scale of what's happening right now boggles the mind, and nothing is being done about it. [1] https://www.newsbreak.com/news/1582350022360/trump-administration-wont-say-who-got-511-billion-in-taxpayer-backed-coronavirus-loans https://www.newsbreak.com/news/1582350022360/trump-administr...

arminiusreturns 6y ago
It's worth noting this is a common tactic of the IMF... offer big loans to countries, as long as they let in outside companies to do business in their sectors, which causes lots of corruption and kickbacks... meanwhile, the problems that needed to be solved don't for the non-powerful locals, and now the country is in worse shape with corruption, and wealth inequality jumps while hvings massive amounts of debt. If that country tries to resist... well, I think people should read John Perkins books.
- api 6y ago
  Sounds like what our own financial sector is doing here.
- m463 6y ago
  When I read his books it seemed that the whole point was to indebt small countries to large ones so they couldn't be independent. But it's hard to figure out "whole point" because it might just be that's how all the individual interests play out and it's not a plan.

Apocryphon 6y ago

You'd think with the reduction in traffic there's all sorts of extra space and time for fixing old infrastructure.

travisjungroth 6y ago
The tourist street in Playa del Carmen, Mexico got tore up right at the start.
wcarron 6y ago
Personally, I have seen that happening on freeways around me. Less in side streets, but still, I've noticed an uptick in roadwork
Rebelgecko 6y ago
They've been doing this by me. LA Metro actually finished digging up the street for a subway station about 7 months ahead of schedule (which I think is practically unheard of) https://thesource.metro.net/2020/06/15/metro-completes-decking-for-planned-beverly-hills-subway-station-seven-months-ahead-of-schedule/ https://thesource.metro.net/2020/06/15/metro-completes-decki...
foota 6y ago
Unfortunately, I think this is countered by municipalities losing funding from sales taxes.
- electriclove 6y ago
  California has gotten a windfall in sales taxes from Amazon and Ebay in recent years when sales tax collection was forced. The money is always poorly spent.
  - foota 6y ago
    I don't know in detail what California's budget is like (other than they've been in the whole lately?) But I personally view a lot of the issues with local and state government spending as being associated with bidding processes and the cost of e.g., infrastructure. I think California generally has the right priorities (roughly, education, healthcare, safety (although this could perhaps be reshuffled, see zeitgeist), and infrastructure). If anything I think they probably need to work to reduce costs in higher education especially and spend more on infrastructure (or reduce costs, but I think that'll be harder than in ed).

throw0101a 6y ago

> […] could be used to build and improve infrastructure. But what about Infrastructure Week? * https://www.npr.org/2018/05/15/611389675/why-its-infrastructure-week-again https://www.npr.org/2018/05/15/611389675/why-its-infrastruct... * https://www.cnn.com/2019/05/23/politics/donald-trump-infrastructure-week/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2019/05/23/politics/donald-trump-infrast... * https://theweek.com/articles/839005/all-infrastructure-weeks-ranked https://theweek.com/articles/839005/all-infrastructure-weeks... /s > There doesn't seem to be a lack of money but it never seem to do anything useful. Well, at the federal level, there are two chambers of Congress and the Executive. Given that there's an election coming up in November, you may wish to do vote for the folks that you best think will change the situation.

EarthIsHome 6y ago
> at the federal level, there are two chambers of Congress and the Executive. Changing anything for the benefit of the masses through electoral politics may never happen again or will be too slow. The last time two times the US had aligned executive and legislative branches were the first two years of the Obama and Trump regimes. So much changes between elections that there's no way we can fix it through electoral politics, and we must find another way. We cannot vote our way out of the immediacy of a pandemic or a constitutional crisis or an environmental disaster. Voting is just too slow help the masses.
- onecommentman 6y ago
  There was an episode of Monty Python I remember. The premise was that in the late 1960s Hitler and his cronies, under assumed identities, were staying at an English boarding house in Minehead, Somerset planning "to get the band back together" via some local election. The TV audience could see through the ruse, but the other residents of the hotel were oblivious. The scene I remember was Mr Hilter ranting from a balcony to a few scattered locals. The bunting was red, don’t remember was the insignia was. As a local yokel was staring up blankly at Mr Hilter’s Germanic rant about the sovereignty of Taunton, Hilter’s crony, Ron Vibbentrop, sidled up to the yokel and, as an aside, told the yokel "He’s right, do you know that?" Don’t know why, but that just popped into my head...

jlmorton 6y ago

Much of the bailouts you're speaking of are loans, not grants. The very large exception is the Paycheck Protection Program, which will in most cases become grants to small businesses. Given the need to institute social distancing, this is the only thing which is keeping hundreds of thousands of small businesses alive. Without the PPP, and other loans to large businesses, we would be seeing tens of millions of permanent job losses. Much of this money was not spent, it was loaned. And without it the lasting economic effects would have been catastrophic. I too would like to see additional spending on infrastructure, and I think we can afford it, but I find myself frustrated to see it framed as bailout vs. infrastructure. These financial lifelines are meant to keep our economy treading water while we necessarily social distance. They're not to save corporations from excessive speculation.

awillen 6y ago

If only there were some precedent we could look to where huge numbers of people were out of work and the government killed two birds with one stone by employing a lot of them on major infrastructure projects. And what if those infrastructure projects, like improvements to roads, bridges and national parks, were largely outside and thus relatively safe even in today's climate of Covid-19. It seems like we might go into a depression... if only that had happened before and we could draw on those experiences instead of dithering and arguing while people can't pay their bills. Dare to dream, am I right?

flukus 6y ago
Problem is most unemployed people don't have the specialized skill set to contribute to these projects and those that do aren't unemployed. The unskilled labor these projects require has mostly been automated over the last 100 years by robotic tools like excavators. Basically every problem we used to be able to throw manpower at now has similar automation and the same sorts of projects would now be done by far fewer people. Any modern new deal would have to look very different to the old one.
- awillen 6y ago
  I won't even pretend to know enough about construction/infrastructure to know what's required to work on it, but there have got to be jobs that can be created that don't require technical skills. I've been reading that lots of people are now going to national parks because other stuff is closed, and they're leaving lots of trash - hire people to pick it up. Roads have potholes, and I can't believe that fixing those requires that specialized of a skill set. And even for some of the things that are most efficiently solved with specialized skills and equipment, if there's a way to do them less efficiently by unskilled people, that's fine, since overspending on labor is totally fine if not desirable in this context.
  - tomschlick 6y ago
    > I can't believe that fixing those requires that specialized of a skill set. No but it does require manual labor and a lot of people consider it beneath them these days to do that. Couple it with many people getting paid more to be on unemployment than they made while working and its a recipe for laziness.

37474783rur 6y ago

Speaking as a socal Californian, infrastructure isn't the problem it's that most of the state hates confronting reality. We'd rather raise minimum wage arbitrarily than admit we have a CoL problem, we invest in bike lane expansions while leaving buses to fight cars for space in most parts of our cities because "omg bikes are so eco friendly and Europe does it", and for some reason we hate high density housing even though rent is on the rise everywhere. We were supposed to have expanded our energy infrastructure already to make more use of natural gas which might have alleviated the need for rolling blackouts but instead we of course chased green energy projects that let people in the politically connected affluent regions pat themselves in the back.