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> These bridges were built during times of relative wealth when the local steel and related industries were doing well. This is a problem that needs to be solv

by voisin 5y ago

> These bridges were built during times of relative wealth when the local steel and related industries were doing well. This is a problem that needs to be solved everywhere. Governments build infrastructure with nothing but hope that future tax revenue will support maintenance. There should be something like a retirement plan for this infrastructure where a certain amount is invested at the time of construction to support maintenance ongoing.

prirun 5y ago
I agree this is a good idea, but history has shown that if there is a pile of money sitting somewhere, governments blow it, just like many states have blown through public retirement funds. The fundamental problem is that people running governments are spending other people's money and they never have a problem doing that.
- voisin 5y ago
  Isn't this a problem that the pile of money isn't ring-fenced from the general coffers?
- lotsofpulp 5y ago
  >The fundamental problem is that people running governments are spending other people's money and they never have a problem doing that. I would go further and state that voters are spending tomorrow's taxpayers' money and they never have a problem doing that. As a politician advocating for paying for things today, you are not going to win elections against someone who promises to push cash flow into the future and lower taxes today. Try replacing taxpayer funded defined benefit pensions (which can be pushed onto taxpayers decades in the future) with purchasing equivalent annuities from an insurance company today (which have to be properly accounted for and paid for today, requiring higher taxes today).
  - hnthrowaway0315 5y ago
    > I would go further and state that voters are spending tomorrow's taxpayers' money and they never have a problem doing that. This is what happens to retail politics when the population is trained to think for the short term. After all (successful) politicians merely follow trends.
- acdha 5y ago
  > The fundamental problem is that people running governments are spending other people's money and they never have a problem doing that. This wording makes that seem passive and that's a key gap in understanding the problem. Almost everyone has high expectations for government services — they want great schools, smooth uncongested roads, safe water, responsive police and fire departments, support for their elderly friends and neighbors, etc. The problem is that fewer people are willing to pay what it takes to actually provide those services, and an entire industry of people misdirecting attention for political reasons — e.g. you'll hear a lot about wasteful spending for stuff which is like 0.1% of the budget but trips someone's political agenda, and they won't mention that you could cut that entire program and it'd fund 2 extra prisoners in jail or a block and a half of street. The other problem is that a lot of our taxes aren't indexed for inflation or have been actively cut. Things like the gas tax used to pay for a higher percentage of road construction, and the massive tax cuts given to rich people have removed a lot of general revenue, and that means that a lot of what was previously covered by that revenue now has to be paid for in ways which are very noticeable to the average voter: property taxes, use fees (as a Californian, the example I use is that the UC system had free tuition until the 1980s — that shifted the cost to the students which made it FAR more noticeable since it went from what you could do with a summer job to the price of a new car annually), etc. All of that tends to mean that a politician who runs on a platform of needing to raise taxes to pay for the things we all use will likely lose to the one saying they can cut the mythical “waste & abuse”, and it has to get bad before that changes.
  - kiba 5y ago
    First, we get rid of stuff we don't need. If we don't need roads, we don't need as many cars. As Elon Musk said, the best part is no part. Cars was a luxury that became necessary to live in most places of America. Then, we can talk about raising taxes and funding enough infrastructure. What we cannot do is fund financially inefficient infrastructure.
- brewdad 5y ago
  If there is a pile of money somewhere, some politicians will choose to cut taxes and "give back" that money for political gain as well. Both are a problem.
BurningFrog 5y ago
New shiny projects win elections. Maintaining existing things instead do not.
acdha 5y ago
The problem is that the entire car hyper-focused model is unsustainable. Cities are expected to maintain huge amounts of infrastructure for people who don't pay much, if anything, in taxes for it but since cars don't scale well there's a constant demand for even more expansion. Recognizing that involves telling a lot of people that they need to switch from driving cars to using transit, biking, etc. and there are a lot of people who don't want to hear that, especially if most of their personal net worth is equity in a building which is too far away at anything less than freeway speeds. It's much easier just to keep pretending that a one-time tax or bond issue will solve it, and so we keep doing the same cycle over and over again.
- voisin 5y ago
  I agree that this is the problem. But the problem is possible in part because governments are not forced to set aside funds for the future maintenance. If they had to fund an annuity to cover lifetime maintenance, then the budget would prove unattractive relative to public transit projects which suffer currently from the appearance of higher up-front costs (but most likely have lower total lifetime costs).
- rootusrootus 5y ago
  > the entire car hyper-focused model is unsustainable I disagree. There's nothing magic about the car. What is unsustainable is not budgeting for real costs nor planning for the future. E.g. we install pipes that are supposed to last 100 years, which just means that everyone alive figures they can ignore it and let the people three generations from today figure out how to deal with it.
  - brewdad 5y ago
    That's just saying the same thing in a different way. It is unsustainable given our current model of taxation and government spending. Good luck convincing the populace to pay significantly more in taxes while the government "hoards" their money for some future expense beyond the average person's lifetime.
    - 5y ago
autokad 5y ago
governments are going to face huge problems as the world de-populates. so much infrastructure and buildings to maintain and no one to maintain / use them
jdkee 5y ago
“Another flaw in the human character is that everybody wants to build and nobody wants to do maintenance.” -Kurt Vonnegut
tvaughan 5y ago
With some caveats. Suburban sprawl is impossibly unsustainable: https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2017/1/9/the-real-reason-your-city-has-no-money https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2017/1/9/the-real-reason...

by voisin 5y ago

prirun 5y ago

I agree this is a good idea, but history has shown that if there is a pile of money sitting somewhere, governments blow it, just like many states have blown through public retirement funds. The fundamental problem is that people running governments are spending other people's money and they never have a problem doing that.

voisin 5y ago
Isn't this a problem that the pile of money isn't ring-fenced from the general coffers?
lotsofpulp 5y ago
>The fundamental problem is that people running governments are spending other people's money and they never have a problem doing that. I would go further and state that voters are spending tomorrow's taxpayers' money and they never have a problem doing that. As a politician advocating for paying for things today, you are not going to win elections against someone who promises to push cash flow into the future and lower taxes today. Try replacing taxpayer funded defined benefit pensions (which can be pushed onto taxpayers decades in the future) with purchasing equivalent annuities from an insurance company today (which have to be properly accounted for and paid for today, requiring higher taxes today).
- hnthrowaway0315 5y ago
  > I would go further and state that voters are spending tomorrow's taxpayers' money and they never have a problem doing that. This is what happens to retail politics when the population is trained to think for the short term. After all (successful) politicians merely follow trends.
acdha 5y ago
> The fundamental problem is that people running governments are spending other people's money and they never have a problem doing that. This wording makes that seem passive and that's a key gap in understanding the problem. Almost everyone has high expectations for government services — they want great schools, smooth uncongested roads, safe water, responsive police and fire departments, support for their elderly friends and neighbors, etc. The problem is that fewer people are willing to pay what it takes to actually provide those services, and an entire industry of people misdirecting attention for political reasons — e.g. you'll hear a lot about wasteful spending for stuff which is like 0.1% of the budget but trips someone's political agenda, and they won't mention that you could cut that entire program and it'd fund 2 extra prisoners in jail or a block and a half of street. The other problem is that a lot of our taxes aren't indexed for inflation or have been actively cut. Things like the gas tax used to pay for a higher percentage of road construction, and the massive tax cuts given to rich people have removed a lot of general revenue, and that means that a lot of what was previously covered by that revenue now has to be paid for in ways which are very noticeable to the average voter: property taxes, use fees (as a Californian, the example I use is that the UC system had free tuition until the 1980s — that shifted the cost to the students which made it FAR more noticeable since it went from what you could do with a summer job to the price of a new car annually), etc. All of that tends to mean that a politician who runs on a platform of needing to raise taxes to pay for the things we all use will likely lose to the one saying they can cut the mythical “waste & abuse”, and it has to get bad before that changes.
- kiba 5y ago
  First, we get rid of stuff we don't need. If we don't need roads, we don't need as many cars. As Elon Musk said, the best part is no part. Cars was a luxury that became necessary to live in most places of America. Then, we can talk about raising taxes and funding enough infrastructure. What we cannot do is fund financially inefficient infrastructure.
brewdad 5y ago
If there is a pile of money somewhere, some politicians will choose to cut taxes and "give back" that money for political gain as well. Both are a problem.

BurningFrog 5y ago

New shiny projects win elections. Maintaining existing things instead do not.

acdha 5y ago

The problem is that the entire car hyper-focused model is unsustainable. Cities are expected to maintain huge amounts of infrastructure for people who don't pay much, if anything, in taxes for it but since cars don't scale well there's a constant demand for even more expansion. Recognizing that involves telling a lot of people that they need to switch from driving cars to using transit, biking, etc. and there are a lot of people who don't want to hear that, especially if most of their personal net worth is equity in a building which is too far away at anything less than freeway speeds. It's much easier just to keep pretending that a one-time tax or bond issue will solve it, and so we keep doing the same cycle over and over again.

voisin 5y ago
I agree that this is the problem. But the problem is possible in part because governments are not forced to set aside funds for the future maintenance. If they had to fund an annuity to cover lifetime maintenance, then the budget would prove unattractive relative to public transit projects which suffer currently from the appearance of higher up-front costs (but most likely have lower total lifetime costs).
rootusrootus 5y ago
> the entire car hyper-focused model is unsustainable I disagree. There's nothing magic about the car. What is unsustainable is not budgeting for real costs nor planning for the future. E.g. we install pipes that are supposed to last 100 years, which just means that everyone alive figures they can ignore it and let the people three generations from today figure out how to deal with it.
- brewdad 5y ago
  That's just saying the same thing in a different way. It is unsustainable given our current model of taxation and government spending. Good luck convincing the populace to pay significantly more in taxes while the government "hoards" their money for some future expense beyond the average person's lifetime.
  - 5y ago

autokad 5y ago

governments are going to face huge problems as the world de-populates. so much infrastructure and buildings to maintain and no one to maintain / use them

jdkee 5y ago

“Another flaw in the human character is that everybody wants to build and nobody wants to do maintenance.” -Kurt Vonnegut

tvaughan 5y ago

With some caveats. Suburban sprawl is impossibly unsustainable: https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2017/1/9/the-real-reason-your-city-has-no-money https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2017/1/9/the-real-reason...