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The American Jobs Plan Will Make Our Infrastructure Crisis Worse

81 points by burlesona 6y ago

nbardy 6y ago
I'm so happy to see strong towns growing. We need a serious change of direction in America. It's going to take a lot of work to move the social momentum.
seibelj 6y ago
Plus these giant bills are rife with pet projects and unrelated spending. The Coronavirus bill spent a small amount on COVID and somehow included an $86 billion pension bailout https://www.cnbc.com/2021/03/08/covid-relief-bill-gives-86-billion-bailout-to-failing-union-pension-plans.html https://www.cnbc.com/2021/03/08/covid-relief-bill-gives-86-b... This is politics as usual and no one seems to care about fiscal restraint anymore, so who cares anyway.
- merpnderp 6y ago
  They’ll care a whole lot when rates get up to a mere 4-5%.
- mywittyname 6y ago
  I feel like our Congress is too small given the size of the country. Individuals in Congress wield incredible amounts of power and they leverage that power into personal gain. If Congress were 4,350 or even 43,500 members strong, I suspect that we'd see a large reduction in wasteful spending / bribes because individual Congresspeople would wield less than 10th or 100th of the power they do now. People wouldn't be adding a billion here or a billion there to get that one more vote they need to get the bill passed.
  - mistermann 6y ago
    I would like if we could at least start having a conversation about something like: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liquid_democracy https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liquid_democracy
  - burlesona 6y ago
    This is a good point. You might enjoy Lee Drutman's book, "Breaking the Two Party Doom Loop," where one of his key observations is that fixing the size of the House has distorted representation in Congress and contributed to hyper partisanship. He recommends increasing the size to 700 representatives (IIRC) based on the "Wyoming Principle," the idea that every state gets at least 1 representative in the house and thus each representative should be representing approximately the population of the least populous state.
    - jimbokun 6y ago
      That’s a simple but brilliant solution.
  - geitir 6y ago
    Wouldn't giving states more legislative power and reducing specifically federal government be a solution? There are arguments that humans will mismanage anything past a certain point of comprehension, I think 1.2 trillion dollars definitely falls into that category, I don't care how smart you are. Regardless I agree that a big issue is not enough heads are making these decisions.
  - nyczomg 6y ago
    I've joked with friends, that if I someday get some free time I want to start a movement to get The Congressional Appointment Amendment ratified. Did you know that at one point it was only 1 state away from ratification? And had it been ratified, we would have around 6,000 representatives in the house today! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Congressional_Apportionment_Amendment https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Congressional_Apportionment_Am... Care to join my movement?
  - dragonwriter 6y ago
    While I agree thar Congress should be somewhat larger, there is the problem that rhe bigger it is, the bigger the internal power differentials will be, which increases high-corruption-risk influence points.
  - kiba 6y ago
    I think it will increase pork, because every congresscritter is a gatekeeper and their job is to bring home the bacon.
  - dillondoyle 6y ago
    I don't think I agree with the outcome you suggest, but I do agree with increasing more Congressional reps. the per /capita has been much lower in the past. https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/05/31/u-s-population-keeps-growing-but-house-of-representatives-is-same-size-as-in-taft-era/ https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/05/31/u-s-populat...
- post_break 6y ago
  I hate that all bills are this way now. They can't pass a single issue bill any more, it has to be this giant tar ball where everyone tries to stuff as much as they can into it.
- Yoofie 6y ago
  I am still amazed every time these Omnibus bills are proposed and passed. It such a blatant sign of corruption and no one seems to give a damn.
ericmay 6y ago
I'm sure I'll get some angry responses here like I did in some of my previous comments (someone implied I was poor or something because they thought that I couldn't afford 3 cars???), but I so far couldn't agree more with this article. I voted for Biden and lean independent, so this isn't political. But this infrastructure bill is largely a jobs and pork program and isn't meaningful change. We don't need more new highways. "In the 2010 stimulus package, my community received millions for a new road. Guess what? That gave us some short-term construction jobs, but now my community has a new overengineered, overbuilt road to maintain. Forever. This is what infrastructure is: a forever obligation." Yep. And ya know what? Building trains isn't going to solve the problem either. Why build a train when you go from one city to another and you just have to rent a car when you get there anyway? Trains work when you have desirable places to go once you step off the train. Maybe if we're lucky those places will spring up around the train station(s). And even if you largely disagree with the article, at least appreciate that someone is challenging the status quo in an honest, if not ideological way, who wants to make America a better, more sustainable place. I feel frustrated on a routine basis that nobody ever questions every family having all these cars, maintaining them, paying insurance, and building and maintaining new roads and highways versus like, just building differently instead of the suburbs and strip malls. I do live in the suburbs, and it's not all bad. It's easy to get in my car and drive a mile down the road and get a coffee from McDonald's, what's not to love? And my Amazon Prime packages from some warehouse never get stolen. Hell, most days I don't need to leave near my house or talk to anybody, I can just interact with them on social media instead. (-edit- /s) Ok, I do admit there are some nice things. Having a yard (aside from the constant mowing noises, weed killer, etc.) has some nice benefits. We did condense down to one car at least since we don't have kids.
- ardit33 6y ago
  I disagree with you on the trains part. Where do you live? There are parts of the country where trains are a must for everyday commuters, and intercity commuters. NYC, Boston, DC, etc... Do you realize that the north-east corridor is already profitable, and it is used a lot. (NYC, D.C. and Boston part). Its profits go to subsidize other routes. That corridor needs a high-speed portion, but there has always been political oppositions to it, and this bill doesn't do much, or hasn't specified anything. Seems like a Obama 'shovel ready' infra plan 2.0, it didn't accomplish anything meaningful and lasting to the country. This looks the same.
arcticfox 6y ago
I was ready to be skeptical based off of the title but I really enjoyed the content. I wish the future parts were ready already as they promise a lot of the meat in terms of examples.
eutropia 6y ago
I generally am a fan of strongtowns, but I found the analysis from Yglesias more satisfying: https://www.slowboring.com/p/roads-and-bridges https://www.slowboring.com/p/roads-and-bridges The gist is: the rescue plan includes some pork, but throws a lot of money at problems that are tractable by throwing money at them. He also shows that our roads and bridges aren’t that bad: and luckily more money is going into electric vehicles ($147B vs $115B). Yeah, a lot of this money will end up in the hands of entrenched players and there’s no transit/road use reforms, but there’s some good stuff in there beyond the evocative “roads and bridges” soundbyte.
- justinzollars 6y ago
  > plan includes some pork I can't find any infrastructure in the plan. It looks like we will spend trillions and have absolutely nothing to show for it when it's over.
  - wolfram74 6y ago
    Do you not consider repairs/upgrades to existing/outdated infrastructure to be infrastructure spending? Getting lead out of service pipes and wider access to broad band sounds like something tangible to me.
    - justinzollars 6y ago
      No, They messed this up. This is a political gift bag to well connected friends. Not the 21st century infrastructure we need.
  - dragonwriter 6y ago
    > I can't find any infrastructure in the plan. You didn’t look too hard. The plan includes all of: (Transport infrastructure) Highways, bridges, airports, (water infrastructure) water service line (communications infrastructure) fiber (electrical infrastructure) transmission lines (health care infrastructure) hospital modernization (educational infrastructure) school facility modernization
eatonphil 6y ago
I was a bit surprised by this but I guess I didn't thoroughly read the plan. Strong Towns issue is that this plan is ambitious in "size, not vision". Where fixing roads also means expanding the number of lanes.
burlesona 6y ago
I expect there will be a lot of skeptical reaction to this, so I'll just encourage readers to read through the whole article (and subsequent articles, if you find this one intriguing), with an open mind. Specifically, the most important TLDR is that we are not actually suffering from an infrastructure crisis because we spend less on infrastructure than we did in the past, but because we have so much to maintain that even a historic massive capital program like the American Jobs plan is nowhere near enough to fix the maintenance backlog. The money for maintenance should be coming from local revenue that the infrastructure is generating, but most of our infrastructure is in rural and sparse suburban areas and generating little to no return on the investment, so local governments can't afford to maintain it all. If we want to truly fix American infrastructure, we should be looking to triage our maintenance backlog, let go of old infrastructure that doesn't generate a positive return, and consolidate our investments around projects that generate more in tax revenue (over time) than the amortized capital cost of the infrastructure AND its ongoing lifetime maintenance.
- jjcon 6y ago
  Or they can just keep doing what they’re doing because it provides a diverse landscape that is America - if it makes them happy why not? There is more to the variety than ROI - I’ve loved wandering through the towns when in the USA - a bit ragtag in parts? Sure. Beautiful? Absolutely.
dahdum 6y ago
I used to be all about the Strong Towns ethos, but now that I’m older I’ve run to the type of suburb they decry. A nice SFH, big yard, garage filled with tools, good schools, and quiet winding streets all tucked almost a mile from commercial business. After a couple decades of high density living I couldn’t be happier.
- burlesona 6y ago
  I'm glad that you enjoy your heavily subsidized new lifestyle. It's really hard to argue against receiving far more in public benefits than you pay in taxes. That's the point of Strong Towns: not that there's anything wrong with single family houses in and of themselves, but that the way our economy is structured right now, they usually don't pay for themselves.
  - ls612 6y ago
    But that’s not true really. It only appears true because many people who live in a suburb work in a city center and thus count towards that city center’s output and tax revenue.
    - burlesona 6y ago
      In almost every part of the US and almost every situation, the taxes you pay are based on the place you live, not where you work. For most cities, commuters who drive into the city just to work and then drive out are a terrible liability, because they wear out the roads driving in and out every day, then pay their property taxes (which is typically the large majority of local revenue) to a different city. I believe NYC may be a partial exception to this as I know it has local income tax (which is very rare), but I'm not sure if they charge that to people who don't also live in the city. Other exceptions are some towns that have almost no residential and a lot of commercial, and collect almost all their income from sales tax. But, again, those are the few exceptions, not the norm.
      - bluedino 6y ago
voicedYoda 6y ago
There's a lot of truth in the article, but i do disagree with the section stating that everything must pay for itself. Maybe i misread that, but government shouldn't be run like a business. Jon Oliver talked about debt last week (1) and how infrastructure is paid for. But if I've learned anything in my life, it's that our government is mostly show, and most of these decisions are made behind closed doors, everything else is just posturing for their base. (1) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yq_E3HquRJY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yq_E3HquRJY
- burlesona 6y ago
  Strong Towns agrees with you, and the author points this out in the article, but with specific terminology. Infrastructure is capital investment that needs to generate a return so that it can pay for consumption of public goods. Ie. a road is not really valuable in and of itself, whereas a school or hospital is. From the article: > We need to be obsessive about this, particularly at the local level, because we need to improve our quality of life. Many things that are in the American Jobs Plan are not infrastructure, but rather consumption. Still, they are worthy of our spending. If we want the resources to do them, not just in a one-time blowout but in an ongoing manner, then we need a real financial return on our infrastructure investments. > If we want to spend $10 billion establishing a Civilian Climate Corps, we have to make our investments in infrastructure financially productive. > If we want to spend $100 billion on public schools and $12 billion on community colleges, we need our infrastructure investments to have a positive return on investment. > If we want to spend $25 billion on child care, $400 billion on care for the aging and people with disabilities, and expand long-term care under Medicaid, we can’t make infrastructure investments that make our cities poorer. > If we want to spend $15 billion eliminating racial and gender inequities, $40 billion on job training, and $48 billion on workforce development and worker protection, then we can’t allow our federal infrastructure investments to continue to induce, everywhere across this continent, the American version of the Chinese Ghost City.
ardit33 6y ago
While I agree the current plan is very weak, the article doesn't have any true specific points or proposition... just generic points. Anyway, it Seems like the current proposal is a Obama 'shovel ready' infra plan 2.0, it didn't accomplish anything meaningful and lasting to the country. This looks the same. I would have loved to have seen some true high-speed rail proposition, yet it doesn't contain anything like that. Biden is not looking for some true meaningful change, just more of the same stuff. note: if you want to revitalize small towns centers/cores, trains are the best options. If you travel in europe, especially in Germany, in almost every medium town at its core/center there is a train station. It creates an ecosystem around it. Roads to lead to more sprawl and the typical strip-mall architecture.
- Yoofie 6y ago
  This is the first article in a series. The author already has three articles up where he has more suggestions. Part II - https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2021/4/12/the-half-truth-on-infrastructure-at-the-heart-of-the-american-jobs-plan#amjobsplan3 https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2021/4/12/the-half-truth... Part III - https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2021/4/13/when-it-comes-to-infrastructure-the-american-jobs-plan-is-business-as-usual https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2021/4/13/when-it-comes-... I agree rail would be great but the problem is that auto-centric attitude is deeply entrenched in the culture. Any rail proposal will just have a huge list of various groups, organizations and citizens opposing it and thus driving up costs and ultimately killing any plans.
darkerside 6y ago
The first example with all the empty towns... Yes, it absolutely is less wasteful to have a single building in a big empty parking lot than to build a large city with no occupants. What am I missing???
- alanbernstein 6y ago
  Not sure if I agree with the author's equivocation, but it's still not an effective use of resources (i.e. land), in that a large piece of land in the middle of a populated area is "developed" but in an empty and useless way.
gre 6y ago
Build some maglev trains literally anywhere.
rossdavidh 6y ago
Two main points he is missing about the infrastructure/jobs bill: 1) it is primarily about pumping out some working-class jobs, quickly, before we have too many angry young men turning to criminal activity in the cities, driving even more people (and businesses) out of the cities, in a downward spiral. This isn't "investment", it's more like a blood transfusion. 2) if our system were more democratic than it currently is, the infrastructure would not be less auto-centric, it would be far more automobile-centric. If it were put up to a vote, there would be >2/3 in favor of automobile as the only infrastructure getting worked on. Not saying that would be wise, just that it's not the undemocratic aspects of America's system that cause it to be auto-centric, it's the democratic aspects.
Aunche 6y ago
This article blatantly mischaracterizes Chinese "ghost cities". The reality is that "ghost cities" do generally get occupied over time. That's how Shenzhen went from sleepy fishing town to the third most economically powerful city in China in 40 years. Even the source that the author cites acknowledges this.
robbmorganf 6y ago
Hypothetically, if I built a system tomorrow that recommended which roads and bridges were most worth spending on (because they actually enable economic activity but are in poor condition, so not vacation bridges), is there enough leeway in this bill to actually advise the spending? I don't have the skills to do that, much less by tomorrow, but I'm wondering how set in stone the list of actual bridges to work on is.
osugunner 6y ago
One thing that I don't see mentioned enough is the evolution of self-driving cars. Plenty of people talk about induced demand and high-speed rail, but I think fail to see the future of commuting. High-speed rail makes sense in some areas, in other areas it doesn't seem to make as much sense, especially if traffic/congestion can be solved with autonomously connected vehicles. High speed rail has always been a massive undertaking and expensive proposition and they seem especially stifled by eminent domain issues. It won't be long until I can sit in my autonomous car which communicates with other vehicles on the road in order to maintain a steady flow of traffic. Maybe not a fast as high-speed rail but almost just as convenient possibly even more so. Not to mention our infrastructure is seemingly already set up for it. Even for longer travel, I love the train as much as anyone but traveling by air just seems much more efficient. Maybe I'm a bit short-sided living on the west coast, but I can't help but think high-speed rail is only appropriate in certain areas at best.
mLuby 6y ago
> A productive investment in infrastructure [must]: > 1. cover the costs of the infrastructure investment, > 2. pay for the ongoing operations and maintenance of that infrastructure, > 3. create enough wealth to ultimately pay for the rehabilitation and replacement of that infrastructure, and > 4. provide a return so that our communities can increase their consumption (i.e., improve their quality of life). #3 is a duplicate of #1, and #4 is certain if #1 and #2 are achieved. So really just #1 and #2 matter, and I do agree with those two—but how do you measure the ROI? Are we any good at estimating infrastructure construction, maintenance, and deprecation costs, or measuring (and taxing) economic impact of said infrastructure? My impression is no, because if we were there'd be tons of companies out there building toll roads and railways instead of the government having to will infrastructure into being. If the author's so concerned with Chinese ascendancy, maybe look at how to get the 1.1 billion extra people the United States would need to compete. (Hint: immigration.) Unless they think there's some magic sweet spot beyond which each additional worker is more liability than asset to the economy? From the site, it's clear what Strong Towns is against ("wasteful" infrastructure), but less so what they're for (Self-sufficient-at-zero-growth infra? Agile Manifesto approach to infra?). Speaking of manifestos, I'll leave you with this: "[Capitalism] has subjected the country to the rule of the towns. It has created enormous cities, has greatly increased the urban population as compared with the rural, and has thus rescued a considerable part of the population from the idiocy of rural life." -Marx
throwaway189262 6y ago
Biden's jobs plan is largely a fig leaf to the poor rural voters that believe America has left them behind. Initiatives like 100% rural broadband are less about making the most efficient use of resources, and more about attempting to bring some money and jobs back to bumfuck America. The author makes the mistake of framing the Jobs Plan as inefficient in the goals it was designed for. It's not. Everybody knows investing in podunk towns that peaked half a century ago is a "waste of money". The Jobs plan contains these measures in an attempt to reduce the vast inequality between these places and wealthy "hub" cities that produce an ever increasing majority of US GDP. Will it work? I have no idea
dragonwriter 6y ago
> Without much effort, we see that public investment peaked in the 1960s and is at its lowest level since then. That’s what we see, but that is wrong Except its not. > What you are seeing here is NET public investment. For those of you who don’t routinely deal with budgets and finance, a “net” number is always the difference of two other numbers. For example, net revenue (also commonly called “profit”) is the difference between gross revenue and expenses. Net public investment is the difference between gross public investment and depreciation. True, so far. > I’m going to simplify this way down, to the point where I might be accused of oversimplification. In my defense, I am not going to oversimplify this nearly as much as the American Jobs Plan has, and I’m going to do it in a way to help you understand what is really going on, not obscure reality with a clever truth (or half-truth, if you prefer). Except that is exactly what the author does. > There are two ways for this number to fall. The first is if we are spending less on infrastructure than in prior years. [...] The other way for the net number to fall is for depreciation to rise. True. Those are both possible But having said that the White House plan use of net infrastructure spending as a share of GDP creates a misleading picture of a peak on the 1960s falling subsequently, and pointing out how net numbers can go down because the negative side goes up instead of the positive side going down, the author provides a bunch of metaphors and analogies and other distractions but, critically doesn’t say what gross investment actually looks like, hoping you’ll just accept his mention of how it could be different because of rising depreciation masking the real trend in investment as the truth of what’s happening, since he said the plan description is misleading. As it turns out gross infrastructure spending...peaked in the late-1960s at around 3% of GDP and has fallen since to under 2%. [0] While the drop is slightly less pronounced than in the net spending chart from the White House plan, its clearly not a case of rising depreciation creating a false impression of falling spending. [0] https://www.cbpp.org/research/state-budget-and-tax/its-time-for-states-to-invest-in-infrastructure https://www.cbpp.org/research/state-budget-and-tax/its-time-...
tyronehed 6y ago
This site is nothing more than conservative propaganda, doing its best to hide that fact. Nothing to see here: move along.

81 points by burlesona 6y ago

I'm so happy to see strong towns growing. We need a serious change of direction in America. It's going to take a lot of work to move the social momentum.

seibelj 6y ago

Plus these giant bills are rife with pet projects and unrelated spending. The Coronavirus bill spent a small amount on COVID and somehow included an $86 billion pension bailout https://www.cnbc.com/2021/03/08/covid-relief-bill-gives-86-billion-bailout-to-failing-union-pension-plans.html https://www.cnbc.com/2021/03/08/covid-relief-bill-gives-86-b... This is politics as usual and no one seems to care about fiscal restraint anymore, so who cares anyway.

merpnderp 6y ago
They’ll care a whole lot when rates get up to a mere 4-5%.
mywittyname 6y ago
I feel like our Congress is too small given the size of the country. Individuals in Congress wield incredible amounts of power and they leverage that power into personal gain. If Congress were 4,350 or even 43,500 members strong, I suspect that we'd see a large reduction in wasteful spending / bribes because individual Congresspeople would wield less than 10th or 100th of the power they do now. People wouldn't be adding a billion here or a billion there to get that one more vote they need to get the bill passed.
- mistermann 6y ago
  I would like if we could at least start having a conversation about something like: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liquid_democracy https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liquid_democracy
- burlesona 6y ago
  This is a good point. You might enjoy Lee Drutman's book, "Breaking the Two Party Doom Loop," where one of his key observations is that fixing the size of the House has distorted representation in Congress and contributed to hyper partisanship. He recommends increasing the size to 700 representatives (IIRC) based on the "Wyoming Principle," the idea that every state gets at least 1 representative in the house and thus each representative should be representing approximately the population of the least populous state.
  - jimbokun 6y ago
    That’s a simple but brilliant solution.
- geitir 6y ago
  Wouldn't giving states more legislative power and reducing specifically federal government be a solution? There are arguments that humans will mismanage anything past a certain point of comprehension, I think 1.2 trillion dollars definitely falls into that category, I don't care how smart you are. Regardless I agree that a big issue is not enough heads are making these decisions.
- nyczomg 6y ago
  I've joked with friends, that if I someday get some free time I want to start a movement to get The Congressional Appointment Amendment ratified. Did you know that at one point it was only 1 state away from ratification? And had it been ratified, we would have around 6,000 representatives in the house today! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Congressional_Apportionment_Amendment https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Congressional_Apportionment_Am... Care to join my movement?
- dragonwriter 6y ago
  While I agree thar Congress should be somewhat larger, there is the problem that rhe bigger it is, the bigger the internal power differentials will be, which increases high-corruption-risk influence points.
- kiba 6y ago
  I think it will increase pork, because every congresscritter is a gatekeeper and their job is to bring home the bacon.
- dillondoyle 6y ago
  I don't think I agree with the outcome you suggest, but I do agree with increasing more Congressional reps. the per /capita has been much lower in the past. https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/05/31/u-s-population-keeps-growing-but-house-of-representatives-is-same-size-as-in-taft-era/ https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/05/31/u-s-populat...
post_break 6y ago
I hate that all bills are this way now. They can't pass a single issue bill any more, it has to be this giant tar ball where everyone tries to stuff as much as they can into it.
Yoofie 6y ago
I am still amazed every time these Omnibus bills are proposed and passed. It such a blatant sign of corruption and no one seems to give a damn.

ericmay 6y ago

I'm sure I'll get some angry responses here like I did in some of my previous comments (someone implied I was poor or something because they thought that I couldn't afford 3 cars???), but I so far couldn't agree more with this article. I voted for Biden and lean independent, so this isn't political. But this infrastructure bill is largely a jobs and pork program and isn't meaningful change. We don't need more new highways. "In the 2010 stimulus package, my community received millions for a new road. Guess what? That gave us some short-term construction jobs, but now my community has a new overengineered, overbuilt road to maintain. Forever. This is what infrastructure is: a forever obligation." Yep. And ya know what? Building trains isn't going to solve the problem either. Why build a train when you go from one city to another and you just have to rent a car when you get there anyway? Trains work when you have desirable places to go once you step off the train. Maybe if we're lucky those places will spring up around the train station(s). And even if you largely disagree with the article, at least appreciate that someone is challenging the status quo in an honest, if not ideological way, who wants to make America a better, more sustainable place. I feel frustrated on a routine basis that nobody ever questions every family having all these cars, maintaining them, paying insurance, and building and maintaining new roads and highways versus like, just building differently instead of the suburbs and strip malls. I do live in the suburbs, and it's not all bad. It's easy to get in my car and drive a mile down the road and get a coffee from McDonald's, what's not to love? And my Amazon Prime packages from some warehouse never get stolen. Hell, most days I don't need to leave near my house or talk to anybody, I can just interact with them on social media instead. (-edit- /s) Ok, I do admit there are some nice things. Having a yard (aside from the constant mowing noises, weed killer, etc.) has some nice benefits. We did condense down to one car at least since we don't have kids.

ardit33 6y ago
I disagree with you on the trains part. Where do you live? There are parts of the country where trains are a must for everyday commuters, and intercity commuters. NYC, Boston, DC, etc... Do you realize that the north-east corridor is already profitable, and it is used a lot. (NYC, D.C. and Boston part). Its profits go to subsidize other routes. That corridor needs a high-speed portion, but there has always been political oppositions to it, and this bill doesn't do much, or hasn't specified anything. Seems like a Obama 'shovel ready' infra plan 2.0, it didn't accomplish anything meaningful and lasting to the country. This looks the same.

arcticfox 6y ago

I was ready to be skeptical based off of the title but I really enjoyed the content. I wish the future parts were ready already as they promise a lot of the meat in terms of examples.

eutropia 6y ago

I generally am a fan of strongtowns, but I found the analysis from Yglesias more satisfying: https://www.slowboring.com/p/roads-and-bridges https://www.slowboring.com/p/roads-and-bridges The gist is: the rescue plan includes some pork, but throws a lot of money at problems that are tractable by throwing money at them. He also shows that our roads and bridges aren’t that bad: and luckily more money is going into electric vehicles ($147B vs $115B). Yeah, a lot of this money will end up in the hands of entrenched players and there’s no transit/road use reforms, but there’s some good stuff in there beyond the evocative “roads and bridges” soundbyte.

justinzollars 6y ago
> plan includes some pork I can't find any infrastructure in the plan. It looks like we will spend trillions and have absolutely nothing to show for it when it's over.
- wolfram74 6y ago
  Do you not consider repairs/upgrades to existing/outdated infrastructure to be infrastructure spending? Getting lead out of service pipes and wider access to broad band sounds like something tangible to me.
  - justinzollars 6y ago
    No, They messed this up. This is a political gift bag to well connected friends. Not the 21st century infrastructure we need.
- dragonwriter 6y ago
  > I can't find any infrastructure in the plan. You didn’t look too hard. The plan includes all of: (Transport infrastructure) Highways, bridges, airports, (water infrastructure) water service line (communications infrastructure) fiber (electrical infrastructure) transmission lines (health care infrastructure) hospital modernization (educational infrastructure) school facility modernization

eatonphil 6y ago

I was a bit surprised by this but I guess I didn't thoroughly read the plan. Strong Towns issue is that this plan is ambitious in "size, not vision". Where fixing roads also means expanding the number of lanes.

burlesona 6y ago

I expect there will be a lot of skeptical reaction to this, so I'll just encourage readers to read through the whole article (and subsequent articles, if you find this one intriguing), with an open mind. Specifically, the most important TLDR is that we are not actually suffering from an infrastructure crisis because we spend less on infrastructure than we did in the past, but because we have so much to maintain that even a historic massive capital program like the American Jobs plan is nowhere near enough to fix the maintenance backlog. The money for maintenance should be coming from local revenue that the infrastructure is generating, but most of our infrastructure is in rural and sparse suburban areas and generating little to no return on the investment, so local governments can't afford to maintain it all. If we want to truly fix American infrastructure, we should be looking to triage our maintenance backlog, let go of old infrastructure that doesn't generate a positive return, and consolidate our investments around projects that generate more in tax revenue (over time) than the amortized capital cost of the infrastructure AND its ongoing lifetime maintenance.

jjcon 6y ago
Or they can just keep doing what they’re doing because it provides a diverse landscape that is America - if it makes them happy why not? There is more to the variety than ROI - I’ve loved wandering through the towns when in the USA - a bit ragtag in parts? Sure. Beautiful? Absolutely.

dahdum 6y ago

I used to be all about the Strong Towns ethos, but now that I’m older I’ve run to the type of suburb they decry. A nice SFH, big yard, garage filled with tools, good schools, and quiet winding streets all tucked almost a mile from commercial business. After a couple decades of high density living I couldn’t be happier.

burlesona 6y ago
I'm glad that you enjoy your heavily subsidized new lifestyle. It's really hard to argue against receiving far more in public benefits than you pay in taxes. That's the point of Strong Towns: not that there's anything wrong with single family houses in and of themselves, but that the way our economy is structured right now, they usually don't pay for themselves.
- ls612 6y ago
  But that’s not true really. It only appears true because many people who live in a suburb work in a city center and thus count towards that city center’s output and tax revenue.
  - burlesona 6y ago
    In almost every part of the US and almost every situation, the taxes you pay are based on the place you live, not where you work. For most cities, commuters who drive into the city just to work and then drive out are a terrible liability, because they wear out the roads driving in and out every day, then pay their property taxes (which is typically the large majority of local revenue) to a different city. I believe NYC may be a partial exception to this as I know it has local income tax (which is very rare), but I'm not sure if they charge that to people who don't also live in the city. Other exceptions are some towns that have almost no residential and a lot of commercial, and collect almost all their income from sales tax. But, again, those are the few exceptions, not the norm.
    - bluedino 6y ago

voicedYoda 6y ago

There's a lot of truth in the article, but i do disagree with the section stating that everything must pay for itself. Maybe i misread that, but government shouldn't be run like a business. Jon Oliver talked about debt last week (1) and how infrastructure is paid for. But if I've learned anything in my life, it's that our government is mostly show, and most of these decisions are made behind closed doors, everything else is just posturing for their base. (1) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yq_E3HquRJY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yq_E3HquRJY

burlesona 6y ago
Strong Towns agrees with you, and the author points this out in the article, but with specific terminology. Infrastructure is capital investment that needs to generate a return so that it can pay for consumption of public goods. Ie. a road is not really valuable in and of itself, whereas a school or hospital is. From the article: > We need to be obsessive about this, particularly at the local level, because we need to improve our quality of life. Many things that are in the American Jobs Plan are not infrastructure, but rather consumption. Still, they are worthy of our spending. If we want the resources to do them, not just in a one-time blowout but in an ongoing manner, then we need a real financial return on our infrastructure investments. > If we want to spend $10 billion establishing a Civilian Climate Corps, we have to make our investments in infrastructure financially productive. > If we want to spend $100 billion on public schools and $12 billion on community colleges, we need our infrastructure investments to have a positive return on investment. > If we want to spend $25 billion on child care, $400 billion on care for the aging and people with disabilities, and expand long-term care under Medicaid, we can’t make infrastructure investments that make our cities poorer. > If we want to spend $15 billion eliminating racial and gender inequities, $40 billion on job training, and $48 billion on workforce development and worker protection, then we can’t allow our federal infrastructure investments to continue to induce, everywhere across this continent, the American version of the Chinese Ghost City.

ardit33 6y ago

While I agree the current plan is very weak, the article doesn't have any true specific points or proposition... just generic points. Anyway, it Seems like the current proposal is a Obama 'shovel ready' infra plan 2.0, it didn't accomplish anything meaningful and lasting to the country. This looks the same. I would have loved to have seen some true high-speed rail proposition, yet it doesn't contain anything like that. Biden is not looking for some true meaningful change, just more of the same stuff. note: if you want to revitalize small towns centers/cores, trains are the best options. If you travel in europe, especially in Germany, in almost every medium town at its core/center there is a train station. It creates an ecosystem around it. Roads to lead to more sprawl and the typical strip-mall architecture.

Yoofie 6y ago
This is the first article in a series. The author already has three articles up where he has more suggestions. Part II - https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2021/4/12/the-half-truth-on-infrastructure-at-the-heart-of-the-american-jobs-plan#amjobsplan3 https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2021/4/12/the-half-truth... Part III - https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2021/4/13/when-it-comes-to-infrastructure-the-american-jobs-plan-is-business-as-usual https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2021/4/13/when-it-comes-... I agree rail would be great but the problem is that auto-centric attitude is deeply entrenched in the culture. Any rail proposal will just have a huge list of various groups, organizations and citizens opposing it and thus driving up costs and ultimately killing any plans.

darkerside 6y ago

The first example with all the empty towns... Yes, it absolutely is less wasteful to have a single building in a big empty parking lot than to build a large city with no occupants. What am I missing???

alanbernstein 6y ago
Not sure if I agree with the author's equivocation, but it's still not an effective use of resources (i.e. land), in that a large piece of land in the middle of a populated area is "developed" but in an empty and useless way.

gre 6y ago

Build some maglev trains literally anywhere.

rossdavidh 6y ago

Two main points he is missing about the infrastructure/jobs bill: 1) it is primarily about pumping out some working-class jobs, quickly, before we have too many angry young men turning to criminal activity in the cities, driving even more people (and businesses) out of the cities, in a downward spiral. This isn't "investment", it's more like a blood transfusion. 2) if our system were more democratic than it currently is, the infrastructure would not be less auto-centric, it would be far more automobile-centric. If it were put up to a vote, there would be >2/3 in favor of automobile as the only infrastructure getting worked on. Not saying that would be wise, just that it's not the undemocratic aspects of America's system that cause it to be auto-centric, it's the democratic aspects.

Aunche 6y ago

This article blatantly mischaracterizes Chinese "ghost cities". The reality is that "ghost cities" do generally get occupied over time. That's how Shenzhen went from sleepy fishing town to the third most economically powerful city in China in 40 years. Even the source that the author cites acknowledges this.

robbmorganf 6y ago

Hypothetically, if I built a system tomorrow that recommended which roads and bridges were most worth spending on (because they actually enable economic activity but are in poor condition, so not vacation bridges), is there enough leeway in this bill to actually advise the spending? I don't have the skills to do that, much less by tomorrow, but I'm wondering how set in stone the list of actual bridges to work on is.

osugunner 6y ago

One thing that I don't see mentioned enough is the evolution of self-driving cars. Plenty of people talk about induced demand and high-speed rail, but I think fail to see the future of commuting. High-speed rail makes sense in some areas, in other areas it doesn't seem to make as much sense, especially if traffic/congestion can be solved with autonomously connected vehicles. High speed rail has always been a massive undertaking and expensive proposition and they seem especially stifled by eminent domain issues. It won't be long until I can sit in my autonomous car which communicates with other vehicles on the road in order to maintain a steady flow of traffic. Maybe not a fast as high-speed rail but almost just as convenient possibly even more so. Not to mention our infrastructure is seemingly already set up for it. Even for longer travel, I love the train as much as anyone but traveling by air just seems much more efficient. Maybe I'm a bit short-sided living on the west coast, but I can't help but think high-speed rail is only appropriate in certain areas at best.

mLuby 6y ago

> A productive investment in infrastructure [must]: > 1. cover the costs of the infrastructure investment, > 2. pay for the ongoing operations and maintenance of that infrastructure, > 3. create enough wealth to ultimately pay for the rehabilitation and replacement of that infrastructure, and > 4. provide a return so that our communities can increase their consumption (i.e., improve their quality of life). #3 is a duplicate of #1, and #4 is certain if #1 and #2 are achieved. So really just #1 and #2 matter, and I do agree with those two—but how do you measure the ROI? Are we any good at estimating infrastructure construction, maintenance, and deprecation costs, or measuring (and taxing) economic impact of said infrastructure? My impression is no, because if we were there'd be tons of companies out there building toll roads and railways instead of the government having to will infrastructure into being. If the author's so concerned with Chinese ascendancy, maybe look at how to get the 1.1 billion extra people the United States would need to compete. (Hint: immigration.) Unless they think there's some magic sweet spot beyond which each additional worker is more liability than asset to the economy? From the site, it's clear what Strong Towns is against ("wasteful" infrastructure), but less so what they're for (Self-sufficient-at-zero-growth infra? Agile Manifesto approach to infra?). Speaking of manifestos, I'll leave you with this: "[Capitalism] has subjected the country to the rule of the towns. It has created enormous cities, has greatly increased the urban population as compared with the rural, and has thus rescued a considerable part of the population from the idiocy of rural life." -Marx

throwaway189262 6y ago

Biden's jobs plan is largely a fig leaf to the poor rural voters that believe America has left them behind. Initiatives like 100% rural broadband are less about making the most efficient use of resources, and more about attempting to bring some money and jobs back to bumfuck America. The author makes the mistake of framing the Jobs Plan as inefficient in the goals it was designed for. It's not. Everybody knows investing in podunk towns that peaked half a century ago is a "waste of money". The Jobs plan contains these measures in an attempt to reduce the vast inequality between these places and wealthy "hub" cities that produce an ever increasing majority of US GDP. Will it work? I have no idea

dragonwriter 6y ago

> Without much effort, we see that public investment peaked in the 1960s and is at its lowest level since then. That’s what we see, but that is wrong Except its not. > What you are seeing here is NET public investment. For those of you who don’t routinely deal with budgets and finance, a “net” number is always the difference of two other numbers. For example, net revenue (also commonly called “profit”) is the difference between gross revenue and expenses. Net public investment is the difference between gross public investment and depreciation. True, so far. > I’m going to simplify this way down, to the point where I might be accused of oversimplification. In my defense, I am not going to oversimplify this nearly as much as the American Jobs Plan has, and I’m going to do it in a way to help you understand what is really going on, not obscure reality with a clever truth (or half-truth, if you prefer). Except that is exactly what the author does. > There are two ways for this number to fall. The first is if we are spending less on infrastructure than in prior years. [...] The other way for the net number to fall is for depreciation to rise. True. Those are both possible But having said that the White House plan use of net infrastructure spending as a share of GDP creates a misleading picture of a peak on the 1960s falling subsequently, and pointing out how net numbers can go down because the negative side goes up instead of the positive side going down, the author provides a bunch of metaphors and analogies and other distractions but, critically doesn’t say what gross investment actually looks like, hoping you’ll just accept his mention of how it could be different because of rising depreciation masking the real trend in investment as the truth of what’s happening, since he said the plan description is misleading. As it turns out gross infrastructure spending...peaked in the late-1960s at around 3% of GDP and has fallen since to under 2%. [0] While the drop is slightly less pronounced than in the net spending chart from the White House plan, its clearly not a case of rising depreciation creating a false impression of falling spending. [0] https://www.cbpp.org/research/state-budget-and-tax/its-time-for-states-to-invest-in-infrastructure https://www.cbpp.org/research/state-budget-and-tax/its-time-...

tyronehed 6y ago

This site is nothing more than conservative propaganda, doing its best to hide that fact. Nothing to see here: move along.