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I’ve always been weary that we have solely relied on the incredible infrastructure investments of our ancestors. Time to build some of our own.

• throwaway894345 5y ago
  I don’t understand why maintaining local infrastructure should be a responsibility of the federal government. I certainly don’t want my bridges to depend on Congress’s ability to cooperate.
  • boringg 5y ago
    Hmm that's a tough question. I am not sure I trust most local municipalities to fund infrastructure properly. I would much rather have the Feds capabilities and funding. How do you land on trusting the municipality?
    • HideousKojima 5y ago
      If infrastructure is federally maintained and a bridge in Pittsburgh collapses, voters in Alaska, California, or Texas aren't really going to care. Or at least not care enough to push their congresscritter to actually do something about it. If Pittsburgh pays for its own infrastructure (or potentially if it's done at the state level) then voters are far more likely to care and to hold their elected representatives to task. A separate reason is that a sizeable chunk of people want their tax money to mostly go towards supporting their own city/county/state. They don't want tax money from taxpayers in Mobile, Alabama funding bridges in Vancouver, Washington or vice versa. Edit: Also if they were federally managed that would likely mean the feds giving that money for the states to manage, and that always comes with strings attached. See, for example, highway funding to states being dependent on raising the minimum drinking age to 21
      • long_time_gone 5y ago
        These seem like arguments to eliminate the federal government entirely. If the citizens don't want it and don't care about people in other states, then we aren't really a union. Meanwhile, the voter in Alaska has a huge portion of their infrastructure funded by tax payers in other states. > Also if they were federally managed that would likely mean the feds giving that money for the states to manage It is done that way today because no state collects enough gas tax to actually fund their own roads and bridges. All money comes with strings attached, it's one of the characteristics of money.
        • SllX 5y ago
          The Feds do things besides move our money around different States to inefficiently spend on local infrastructure. If you want to go all in on the eliminating the Federal government, you’d have to also go after the Military, Federal Courts and the Department of State.
        • Xeoncross 5y ago
          > then we aren't really a union A republic union in military protection and legal/political bridges/agreements. If the fed is in charge of everything, then there is no union, just a large federal state. This is what we're becoming as everyone places their hope in Congress for solutions. Like most large countries with a single rule instead of unified states, we're going to regret this more as time goes on. (Excluding countries smaller in population than a single US state)
      • monkeybutton 5y ago
        If infrastructure was all locally funded, wouldn't there be even worse disparities between rich and poor states? From the federal government's point of view, you'd want to invest in weaker areas and bring them up to the same level as the rest of the country.
        • MagnumOpus 5y ago
          > From the federal government's point of view, you'd want to invest in weaker areas and bring them up to the same level as the rest of the country Building bridges to nowhere in Alaska or fancy bridges/tunnels in places with zero population density is extremely unlikely to make these areas a net contribution to the federal budget over the long term - just the opposite. Arguably extremely rural areas are already oversubsidised and will be never self-sustaining in terms of infrastructure, in terms of just meeting the cost of maintaning roads, power, water, mail delivery infrastructure...
        • throwaway894345 5y ago
          What makes you think the federal government is going to care more? My impression is that the higher up in government you go, the stronger the hold of special interests (special interests work for the rich, not the poor).
    • jtbayly 5y ago
      If you find your local municipality corrupt, you can appeal higher, or move, or run for office. They answer directly to the local voters. Congress as a whole? Not so much.
    • zaphar 5y ago
      If you don't trust local municipalities to fund it properly why would you trust the federal government to do so. The federal goverment is just as politically motivated as a local government and even further removed from the problems than your local municipality.
      • echelon 5y ago
        Plus there are opportunity costs. You can't fund infinite bridges. Perhaps you built too many bridges and some of them don't service enough people to warrant replacement or repair. If you're getting free federal dollars, people don't tend to ask about it. High power people might divert funds to their preferred projects. Or maybe the spending is just outright careless. By keeping the money local, you tie it to local spending and local opportunity cost. There's more oversight, more deliberation, and more care as to how the money is disbursed. They become political talking points, and there's accountability. Not that there isn't a time and place for federally funded projects, but small town bridges probably aren't it.
      • ip26 5y ago
        I think the idea is the Feds are fundamentally more capable at big civil engineering. E.g. the Army Corp of Engineers probably knows a lot more about bridges than your city streets department.
        • zaphar 5y ago
          Yeah but the city streets department isn't actually going to repair, replace the bridge. They'll hire an accredited engineering firm who will in fact be at least as competent as the Army Corp of Engineers to build it. Heck the inspections are even hired out for small municipilities. They don't keep on someone on staff to inspect the 5 bridges in typical small rural town rural America.
          • boringg 5y ago
            Or that local private company that won the RFP through a corrupted process because they are friends with the local small town politicians who will cut corners on safety and maintenance while over billing the community.
    • stickfigure 5y ago
      The work is all done by private contractors, so there's probably not a material difference in capabilities (just funding, which could be routed differently).
    • throwaway894345 5y ago
      For the last two decades local and state governments have been getting things done in the absence of a functional federal government. Obviously this isn't uniformly distributed--some state and local governments probably do suck--but on balance state and local governments are outperforming the federal government so it stands to reason that far more bridges will be maintained if it's the responsibility of state and local governments.
  • janpot 5y ago
    So weird to me these sort of statements. It doesn't need to have a 100% success rate, but if you don't even aim at having your democratic institutions cooperate, then what are they for exactly? And what do you propose as an alternative? private sector? As if they are not known for cutting every possible dollar they can on anything they do. At the expense of lives if they can get away with it.
    • nradov 5y ago
      The alternative is to have state and local governments allocate funding for infrastructure maintenance. There's no need for the federal government to get involved; that just creates an extra layer of bureaucracy and waste. Congress should only be funding major projects with a significant impact on interstate commerce.
      • pohl 5y ago
        If we could get billionaires – who can apparently afford their own hobby space agencies – to pay their taxes, we wouldn't need to catastrophize every little perceived "waste".
        • throwaway894345 5y ago
          This feels like argument by meme, and a very tired meme at that. FWIW, I probably agree with you that it would be nice to have a steeper effective tax rate curve, I just find this kind of rhetoric to be very dull.
          • pohl 5y ago
            That's fair. I feel the same way about your moribund federal waste meme.
            • throwaway894345 5y ago
              I didn't reference federal waste. Can you link me to the comment that you're interpreting as "my federal waste meme"?
  • archontes 5y ago
    Ultimately, the economics of every one of the states depends on the federal government. The government creates dollars in locations like vector field sources, and creates sinks by way of taxes, thereby setting up flow, motivating activity. For the federal government, the vector field is non-conservative. States, however, don't have a money printer. Every dollar they spend, they do have to tax or borrow. Some questions arise in my head: If local infrastructure isn't being maintained, is it because it's not worth maintaining? How would we measure that? Does the stochastic nature of the problem make it intractable for local/state governments? For example, if I have 4200 bridges that are in need of repair in such a way as I can expect two to fail this year, and I am unable to predict which two, does preventing two collapses necessitate addressing all 4200? Is that scale entirely too large for my local government? If it is, is that because those 4200 bridges serve too few people? If not, is that situation unprecedented (can the local government adapt to address a problem that it hasn't had to before)? What if the local government is unhealthy (ideologically opposed to service, disenfranchised citizens, perhaps a southern state)?
    • throwaway894345 5y ago
      I guess I figured "yes, you do all inspections and maintenance on all bridges all the time and pay for it with taxes". If taxes go up, so be it. > What if the local government is unhealthy (ideologically opposed to service, disenfranchised citizens, perhaps a southern state)? Yeah, that's a general argument against giving any government any kind of responsibility (for any issue, how do you know that the government in question will be healthy enough to manage the responsibility?). But I think we can agree that some government should do this, and given the choice between state and local governments which might be dysfunctional (but which have collectively outperformed the federal government for the last two decades) and the federal government which we know to be completely dysfunctional, I would pick the former.
• shadowgovt 5y ago
  Unfortunately, the downside of the steel boom is that nothing about the ability to create all of that infrastructure implied anyone put investment into maintaining that infrastructure.
• DominikPeters 5y ago
  Article says this bridge was built in 1970 so not that ancient.
• cecilpl2 5y ago
  Yeah, lets build a bunch more and stick our descendants with the maintenance cost!
• jeffbee 5y ago
  And it's not just bridges, it's also homes, schools, roads, and railroads. Basically while the older generations were in charge is was policy from local to federal level to build. It was policy to build plenty of homes, plenty of roads, airports, universities, even new cities. Then as soon as the Boomers ascended to political power, everything flipped: we suddenly ceased to build anything, and the only goal of government policy became to enrich the people who had already enormously benefitted from their parents' investments, while impoverishing the next generation. Taxes were cut. Budgets were cut. Unfortunately the only way out of this mess is to extract wealth from those same Boomers, but as long as their stranglehold on political power remains - and let's face it, they are not even done ascending into power, considering that people like Feinstein, Biden, and Pelosi are even older than them - it won't happen. The nation will continue to fall to pieces.