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Many western countries in general do not care for routine maintenance of infrastructure / buildings / water lines / busses. Norway has to be among the worst.

Many western countries in general do not care for routine maintenance of infrastructure / buildings / water lines / busses. Norway has to be among the worst. It is not fun and glorious for a political administration to set aside $$$$ every year that will just go to people doing boring work that the voters will not be impressed with. You dont see politicians "Under my administration we painted XX buildings, we did need maintenance of YY bridges, we replaced ZZ parts of the railway that would become problematic with time. Rather: "Under my administration we opened up a new large hospital (because the other had near 0 maintannce for decades), we built 2 new bridges etc"

ruszki 2y ago
> Norway has to be among the worst. That strange to hear. Why do you have this feeling? After visiting Porto and Italy around and below Napoli, I cannot imagine that there are any place in Nordic countries which has even just similar tolerance to not maintain something. But I don’t know too much about Norway specifically.
Aerroon 2y ago
"If you don't want to pay taxes then who's gonna pay for the roads?" Apparently, nobody pays for it either way. It's astounding to me how little tax money goes into paying for infrastructure. In 2023 the US federal government spent $44.8 billion on infrastructure and transferred $81.5 billion to the states. That's $126.3 billion out of a $6.1 trillion budget. ('Only' $4.4 trillion in revenue though.) That's 2% of the budget.
- rileymat2 2y ago
  In theory, shouldn't it be this way? Having localities pay from local tax money seems like it would focus money on expenditures that the people that use them and pay for them will approve of with their own skin in the game. There are some interstate highways that serve multiple localities, but these should be the minority, right?
  - immibis 2y ago
    Only if the city has the right to bar travelers from passing through.
    - barryrandall 2y ago
      Only if the cities are barred from encroaching upon or demanding access to bypass highways.
    - ghaff 2y ago
      A lot of road infrastructure funding at the town/city level can disproportionately go to wear/tear/usage by people/trucks that don't live in the town and the taxpayers don't benefit (in fact often the opposite). It makes more sense at the state level especially if you factor out interstates and in fact that tends to be how things are handled much of the time in the US.
    - rileymat2 2y ago
      Yes, that’s fair, but we know the vast majority of trips are local outside of certain exceptions.
- mc32 2y ago
  And yet we have money to spare for foreign aid, NGOs, spendthrift in military buying, etc. We should cover all our internal needs before we show our largesse elsewhere.
  - gumby 2y ago
    Most “foreign” aid, especially military aid, is is spent within the “donor” country. Japan is the most extreme in this regard, followed by the USA. And, like maintenance: foreign aid can avoid local problems, e.g. stabilizing countries in central America can reduce the incentive for people to flee to the US (which for most people is a distant plan C over staying where they are or moving a short distance away).
    - mc32 2y ago
      Its grift. Why does the US have to spend money on military aid to first world countries, even if a very sizable chunk is spent on American weaponry? That money could be spent on maintenance rather than fattening our MIC. NGOs are similar. In theory they sound good, the leaders can pull sizable salaries, eclipsing any congresspersons earnings and they are incentivized to keep the bad thing happening—if they solved the problem their reason to be would cease.
      - philistine 2y ago
        To understand why the US government spends so much on rich countries, you can’t just think in economic terms, since that’s not what why the US government is doing it. The reason is geopolitical. It is seen as necessary to give money to allies to prop up their military so the US hegemony can be maintained. Adversaries (China, Russia, Iran) need to be made afraid not only of US might, but also of Allies’ might. So the US doesn’t wait around for those countries to spend on their military on their own, or god forbid to realign their alliances based on their spending. Checks it is.
        EricE 2y ago
        [flagged]
- jessriedel 2y ago
  The vast majority of the budget is just transfers from one person to another. (Social security, welfare, medicaid, etc.) Doesn’t make much more sense to compare this to infrastructure spending than it makes to compare the cost of maintenance on the bank building to the total value of the payments it processes.
- bpodgursky 2y ago
  Most infrastructure is paid for by states and cities, not via federal transfers. Your quote is actively deceptive, you literally cut out the second part of the same source here[1]: > The federal government spent $44.8 billion on infrastructure in 2023 and transferred an additional $81.5 billion to states. In 2021, state and local governments spent $218.5 billion on transportation and infrastructure, excluding federal government transfers. [1] https://usafacts.org/state-of-the-union/transportation-infrastructure/ https://usafacts.org/state-of-the-union/transportation-infra...
  - Aerroon 2y ago
    That's true, but states collect a lot of tax revenue themselves. In 2022 they collected $3.66 trillion.[0] the federal government collected $4.97 trillion in the same timeframe.[1] Also note (a few rows down the table)[2] that the US government spends more than it collects in taxes. In 2022 the expenditures added up to $9.64 trillion. Sure, it's not 2%. It's 3.6% instead. [0] https://www.federalreserve.gov/releases/z1/20240607/html/f107.htm https://www.federalreserve.gov/releases/z1/20240607/html/f10... [1] https://www.federalreserve.gov/releases/z1/20240607/html/f106.htm https://www.federalreserve.gov/releases/z1/20240607/html/f10... [2] https://www.federalreserve.gov/releases/z1/20240607/html/f105.htm https://www.federalreserve.gov/releases/z1/20240607/html/f10...
markus_zhang 2y ago
I suspect it has less with voters but more with which pockets they want to fill. Ordinary people do care about road quality and other boring things.
JKCalhoun 2y ago
> You dont see politicians "Under my administration we painted XX buildings... That's just bad politicking then. "Under my administration we hired hundreds of workers in Anytown who can proudly say they worked to maintain this city's infrastructure and provide a future for not only their kids but all of our kids. Their paychecks put food on the table and money into the local economy."
- barryrandall 2y ago
  Can you point to any candidates who run on that platform and routinely win elections?
throwup238 2y ago
Bridge repair is further complicated by the United States’ form of government. The majority of the major bridges in poor condition in California (and most other states, I presume) were built with Federal highway funds which started drying up in the 1970s, leaving a huge hole in the finances for maintenance. Since most income and business taxes go to the Federal government, states are dependent on Federal grants for a lot of infrastructure.
arp242 2y ago
Infrastructure maintenance was quite a big issue during the 2015 US election. I'm not sure the Trump administration actually did anything about it – I don't really follow US politics that closely. My point is: people do care. I think the bigger problem is maintenance is just one cost out of many. There's also education, and health care, and social services, and police, and firemen, and pensions, and all sorts of other things, and that's also important. It's relatively easy to "save" on maintenance because nothing is going to fall down immediately and no one will really notice – at least not for a while. In the long run you're not really saving anything of course. It's easy to critique this from the sidelines, but the pressures politicians and governments are under make it pretty tricky to do anything else. Saving money in other areas is going to be unpopular. Raising taxes even more so. A lot of times stuff like this is a Kobayashi Maru.

ruszki 2y ago

> Norway has to be among the worst. That strange to hear. Why do you have this feeling? After visiting Porto and Italy around and below Napoli, I cannot imagine that there are any place in Nordic countries which has even just similar tolerance to not maintain something. But I don’t know too much about Norway specifically.

Aerroon 2y ago

"If you don't want to pay taxes then who's gonna pay for the roads?" Apparently, nobody pays for it either way. It's astounding to me how little tax money goes into paying for infrastructure. In 2023 the US federal government spent $44.8 billion on infrastructure and transferred $81.5 billion to the states. That's $126.3 billion out of a $6.1 trillion budget. ('Only' $4.4 trillion in revenue though.) That's 2% of the budget.

rileymat2 2y ago
In theory, shouldn't it be this way? Having localities pay from local tax money seems like it would focus money on expenditures that the people that use them and pay for them will approve of with their own skin in the game. There are some interstate highways that serve multiple localities, but these should be the minority, right?
- immibis 2y ago
  Only if the city has the right to bar travelers from passing through.
  - barryrandall 2y ago
    Only if the cities are barred from encroaching upon or demanding access to bypass highways.
  - ghaff 2y ago
    A lot of road infrastructure funding at the town/city level can disproportionately go to wear/tear/usage by people/trucks that don't live in the town and the taxpayers don't benefit (in fact often the opposite). It makes more sense at the state level especially if you factor out interstates and in fact that tends to be how things are handled much of the time in the US.
  - rileymat2 2y ago
    Yes, that’s fair, but we know the vast majority of trips are local outside of certain exceptions.
mc32 2y ago
And yet we have money to spare for foreign aid, NGOs, spendthrift in military buying, etc. We should cover all our internal needs before we show our largesse elsewhere.
- gumby 2y ago
  Most “foreign” aid, especially military aid, is is spent within the “donor” country. Japan is the most extreme in this regard, followed by the USA. And, like maintenance: foreign aid can avoid local problems, e.g. stabilizing countries in central America can reduce the incentive for people to flee to the US (which for most people is a distant plan C over staying where they are or moving a short distance away).
  - mc32 2y ago
    Its grift. Why does the US have to spend money on military aid to first world countries, even if a very sizable chunk is spent on American weaponry? That money could be spent on maintenance rather than fattening our MIC. NGOs are similar. In theory they sound good, the leaders can pull sizable salaries, eclipsing any congresspersons earnings and they are incentivized to keep the bad thing happening—if they solved the problem their reason to be would cease.
    - philistine 2y ago
      To understand why the US government spends so much on rich countries, you can’t just think in economic terms, since that’s not what why the US government is doing it. The reason is geopolitical. It is seen as necessary to give money to allies to prop up their military so the US hegemony can be maintained. Adversaries (China, Russia, Iran) need to be made afraid not only of US might, but also of Allies’ might. So the US doesn’t wait around for those countries to spend on their military on their own, or god forbid to realign their alliances based on their spending. Checks it is.
      - EricE 2y ago
        [flagged]
jessriedel 2y ago
The vast majority of the budget is just transfers from one person to another. (Social security, welfare, medicaid, etc.) Doesn’t make much more sense to compare this to infrastructure spending than it makes to compare the cost of maintenance on the bank building to the total value of the payments it processes.
bpodgursky 2y ago
Most infrastructure is paid for by states and cities, not via federal transfers. Your quote is actively deceptive, you literally cut out the second part of the same source here[1]: > The federal government spent $44.8 billion on infrastructure in 2023 and transferred an additional $81.5 billion to states. In 2021, state and local governments spent $218.5 billion on transportation and infrastructure, excluding federal government transfers. [1] https://usafacts.org/state-of-the-union/transportation-infrastructure/ https://usafacts.org/state-of-the-union/transportation-infra...
- Aerroon 2y ago
  That's true, but states collect a lot of tax revenue themselves. In 2022 they collected $3.66 trillion.[0] the federal government collected $4.97 trillion in the same timeframe.[1] Also note (a few rows down the table)[2] that the US government spends more than it collects in taxes. In 2022 the expenditures added up to $9.64 trillion. Sure, it's not 2%. It's 3.6% instead. [0] https://www.federalreserve.gov/releases/z1/20240607/html/f107.htm https://www.federalreserve.gov/releases/z1/20240607/html/f10... [1] https://www.federalreserve.gov/releases/z1/20240607/html/f106.htm https://www.federalreserve.gov/releases/z1/20240607/html/f10... [2] https://www.federalreserve.gov/releases/z1/20240607/html/f105.htm https://www.federalreserve.gov/releases/z1/20240607/html/f10...

markus_zhang 2y ago

I suspect it has less with voters but more with which pockets they want to fill. Ordinary people do care about road quality and other boring things.

JKCalhoun 2y ago

> You dont see politicians "Under my administration we painted XX buildings... That's just bad politicking then. "Under my administration we hired hundreds of workers in Anytown who can proudly say they worked to maintain this city's infrastructure and provide a future for not only their kids but all of our kids. Their paychecks put food on the table and money into the local economy."

barryrandall 2y ago
Can you point to any candidates who run on that platform and routinely win elections?

throwup238 2y ago

Bridge repair is further complicated by the United States’ form of government. The majority of the major bridges in poor condition in California (and most other states, I presume) were built with Federal highway funds which started drying up in the 1970s, leaving a huge hole in the finances for maintenance. Since most income and business taxes go to the Federal government, states are dependent on Federal grants for a lot of infrastructure.

arp242 2y ago

Infrastructure maintenance was quite a big issue during the 2015 US election. I'm not sure the Trump administration actually did anything about it – I don't really follow US politics that closely. My point is: people do care. I think the bigger problem is maintenance is just one cost out of many. There's also education, and health care, and social services, and police, and firemen, and pensions, and all sorts of other things, and that's also important. It's relatively easy to "save" on maintenance because nothing is going to fall down immediately and no one will really notice – at least not for a while. In the long run you're not really saving anything of course. It's easy to critique this from the sidelines, but the pressures politicians and governments are under make it pretty tricky to do anything else. Saving money in other areas is going to be unpopular. Raising taxes even more so. A lot of times stuff like this is a Kobayashi Maru.