The US needs to invest in our infrastructure

[The Infidel]

I could have sworn that the Stimulus Bill was to "INVEST" in the infrastructure.

I do like the word "invest", it's the new buzz word from the democrats. I read in the paper where politicians from Wa. used that word after the pep rally from the president. Now I know what that closed door meeting with the democrats was about...or part of the meeting.

40% of it was tax cuts..and that's after it was cut in half by Republicans.

 

[Dont Taz Me Bro]

Well, I see this has degenerated into a partisan political thread and it shouldn't.
Our infrastructure sucks, it's that plain and simple.

And how do you propose we pay for it?

 

[The Infidel]

Well, I see this has degenerated into a partisan political thread and it shouldn't.
Our infrastructure sucks, it's that plain and simple.

And how do you propose we pay for it?

We've payed for it MANY times over already.... question is: where did it all go?

 

[Flopper]

I could have sworn that the Stimulus Bill was to "INVEST" in the infrastructure.

I do like the word "invest", it's the new buzz word from the democrats. I read in the paper where politicians from Wa. used that word after the pep rally from the president. Now I know what that closed door meeting with the democrats was about...or part of the meeting.

No, there is nothing new about the invest word in political speeches. Words and phrases like Investing in America, Investing in Green Technologies, Investing in Education, and Investing in Infrastructure have been around a long time. They are interpreted by supporters and the opposition as a call for government action, i.e. more government spending.

Many of these references do signal some upcoming legislation but just as often they are just wishful thinking. To bad presidents can't say this is what we need to do, but we can't do it now because we just can't afford it.

 

[Frostbitten]

Infrastructure is hyper symbolic. Save your money and concrete and pay a liberal to shut his/her mouth.

 

[Oddball]

Well, I see this has degenerated into a partisan political thread and it shouldn't.
Our infrastructure sucks, it's that plain and simple.

And how do you propose we pay for it?

 

[shintao]

Well, I see this has degenerated into a partisan political thread and it shouldn't.
Our infrastructure sucks, it's that plain and simple.

And how do you propose we pay for it?

We could all pick up cans and bottles along the freeway and turn them into the recycling center? Bake Sale? Car Wash? Lottery? How about license plates for bicycles, and those disabled carts? Sell your old Levis?

 

[shintao]

Well, I see this has degenerated into a partisan political thread and it shouldn't.
Our infrastructure sucks, it's that plain and simple.

And how do you propose we pay for it?

We've payed for it MANY times over already.... question is: where did it all go?

Into deterioration. You get tired of paving freeways over & over, lets get serious and build a glass highway.

 

[Meister]

The last two posts have really confused me....is it me?

 

[Trajan]

Where has all the monies we have already paid in taxes that were supposed to go only to road and bridges gone?

Yeah, where has it gone?

It went to prop up state overspending and bureaucrat pension funds.

Where Did the Stimulus Go?

the money shot from your link-

snip-

In 1979, the late Ned Gramlich, who served on the Federal Reserve Board and earlier as a professor at the University of Michigan, studied the impact of similar grants in stimulus packages in the 1970s. He found that the federal stimulus grants to state and local governments had little effect on their purchases of goods and services. He concluded that the grant recipients used the grants “to pad the surpluses of state and local governments.”

State and local governments did not allocate all the ARRA grants to reducing their issuance of debt. As Graph 3 indicates, they allocated a portion to financing increases in spending on health and welfare programs (particularly the former). Over the seven quarters that ARRA has been in existence, about $70 billion of its funds have been allocated to transfer payments, mostly health and welfare spending. Indeed, the increase in health and welfare spending, particularly the former, was an explicit objective of the stimulus. Nearly half of all stimulus-program grants to states have been funds for Medicaid, the primary state-government health-care program for low-income families. These grants were designed to achieve the Obama administration’s goal of increasing health-care coverage by expanding government health-care programs.

But that goal is a far different one from stimulating aggregate economic activity. Medicaid grants were unlikely to provide much if any stimulus to aggregate economic activity, and they haven’t. Moreover, these grants appear to have caused state governments to shift funds away from purchases of goods and services and into their Medicaid programs.

The 2009 stimulus conditioned a state’s receipt of Medicaid funds on its willingness not to reduce benefits nor restrict eligibility rules. In some instances, this has meant undoing benefit reductions or eligibility restrictions that had been enacted prior to the stimulus program. It appears that this provision actually forced states to allocate to their Medicaid programs funds that would have otherwise been devoted to state and local purchases.

Our detailed statistical analysis confirms this hypothesis. Using data going back to 1969, we estimated the relationship between state- and local- government purchases, revenues, ARRA Medicaid grants, and all other ARRA grants. Controlling for these other factors, the receipt of ARRA Medicaid grants significantly reduced state and local purchases of goods and services.

The policy choice of allocating a large component of the ARRA grants to transfer payments like Medicaid, which provide less “bang for the buck” if any at all, than to infrastructure and other similar expenditures seriously impaired any potential overall stimulus.

 

[Oddball]

And bumpkins like kiwiman wonder why I call them bumpkins.

 

[shintao]

The last two posts have really confused me....is it me?

It is probably you. That aside, how about you retards pick up a shovel and go fix the roads yourself. Take some personal responsibility for your actions? You wear it out, you fix it.

 

[Trajan]

Where has all the monies we have already paid in taxes that were supposed to go only to road and bridges gone?

Yeah, where has it gone?

It went to prop up state overspending and bureaucrat pension funds.

Where Did the Stimulus Go?

you'll notice as usual no one will argue the information on the link, if anyone read it that is, willful ignorance being the order of the day.



on a general note as an example of stimulus project spending-

I can post a whole treatise ala the idiocy that is the rail project here in cali- the long and short of it? Amtrak ran a line from Anaheim to Vegas for years, never made a dime, they pulled the plug o it back in the 90's.

The formula they used to justify the cost by which they would make money , said that the ticket for the train as compared to a ticket from an airline from say SF or Vegas to LA would have to be no more than 50% of the airline cost per ticket to draw ridership, they admitted several months ago that the costs had basically skewed that formula beyond redemption.....yet?

they will go on and build it anyway. So years down the road when cali is saddled with costs to keep something no one rides alive, people will say wtf why did we do this or why are we sptting this? and the unions manning the RR etc. won't let it be touched.....and there it is.

 

[kiwiman127]

Well, I see this has degenerated into a partisan political thread and it shouldn't.
Our infrastructure sucks, it's that plain and simple.

And how do you propose we pay for it?

Moody's says U.S. credit rating risks are rising

The Moody's report, which came hours after a downgrade of Japan by Standard & Poor's and an IMF warning on growing budget deficits in both countries, reiterated previous comments made by the agency late last year.

Moody's had said in December that the extension of Bush-era tax cuts would add to the likelihood of a negative outlook on the U.S. rating in the next two years.

Lower debt ratings typically push up a country's borrowing costs. A negative outlook makes a rating downgrade more likely in the next 12 to 18 months

Moody's says U.S. credit rating risks are rising | Reuters

I thought that maybe, just maybe the posters who are asking "where are we going to get the money" may see the hypocrisy of their "me first" philosophy, but of course they won't.
They support the extension of tax cuts to put money in their pockets (and the top 1%) which will bring down the US's credit rating. BUT when paying for the much needed fix of our infrastructure, they scream, "how are we going to pay for it?" Yet didn't ask the same question about the extension of the Bush tax cuts. Hypocrisy in action.
So Oddball, I said that you couldn't find any experts that disagree to the fact that the US infrastructure is failing, so instead you attack me, like the mindless "me first" goose-stepper you are.

U.S. Infrastructure Spending: No Time to Get Cheap

<snip>
Large capital projects on infrastructure traditionally appeal across party lines since so many constituents benefit from the investment. But that traditional political calculation may not hold in an era when the Tea Party movement is repelled by the federal government's red ink and even a silent majority of more mainstream political participants seems to share a common worry about the soundness of fiscal policy.The backlash against government spending carries over to the state level.For instance, New Jersey Governor Chris Christie cited the cash-strapped state's finances when, on Oct.7, he canceled its participation in an $8.7 billion-plus train tunnel project under the Hudson River.

But the embrace of fiscal conservatism, while understandable, risks ignoring what should be a top priority for the nation's long-term economic health. For one thing, the Aug. 1, 2007, tragic collapse of the I-35 bridge in Minneapolis vividly signaled the nation's deteriorating infrastructure. The investment need is there. For another, it's the kind of government spending that not only yields public quality-of-life benefits; it also raises private rates of return.

And with the government's cost of investment capital extremely low—taken a look at Treasury yields recently?—and heading even lower, the hurdle rate for a positive rate of return on government expenditures won't be hard to reach

"Spending now on infrastructure stimulates the economy in a way that will help provide for long-term higher economic growth that will increase future tax revenue and bring down the debt-to-GDP ratio," says David Aschauer, economist at Bates College. He's the author of an influential set of research papers from the late 1980s and early 1990s on the effect of infrastructure spending on national productivity. "It's real supply-side economics." (One of Ashauer's better-known articles, "Why Is Infrastructure Important?" is available on the Boston Fed's website.The late Edward Gramlich, economist and former Federal Reserve Board governor, wrote a critical review of the infrastructure/productivity literature of the time in "Infrastructure Investment: A Review Essay," which can be found on the World Bank's site.)

U.S. Infrastructure Spending: No Time to Get Cheap - BusinessWeek

 

[Oddball]

Letting me keep what's mine in the first place doesn't cost you anything.

Mebby y'all can take the money being wasted on ETOH subsidies, goofy windmills, urban mass transit rackets and studying the sexual habits of fruit flies to rebuild that "crumbling infrastructure" thingy.

 

[Oddball]

Yeah, where has it gone?

It went to prop up state overspending and bureaucrat pension funds.

Where Did the Stimulus Go?

you'll notice as usual no one will argue the information on the link, if anyone read it that is, willful ignorance being the order of the day.

I did notice that...Seems the other order of the day is to screech "crumbling infrastructure" ad infinitum to distract from the facts.

 

[Mr.Fitnah]

Well, I see this has degenerated into a partisan political thread and it shouldn't.

Not really with the exception of swallows posts the fact remain the money was distributed to fix the roads and bridges that is will be used for Obamas reelection campaign should come as no surprise .

 

[kiwiman127]

It went to prop up state overspending and bureaucrat pension funds.

Where Did the Stimulus Go?

you'll notice as usual no one will argue the information on the link, if anyone read it that is, willful ignorance being the order of the day.

I did notice that...Seems the other order of the day is to screech "crumbling infrastructure" ad infinitum to distract from the facts.

It seems that you have not disproved that the US needs to invest in the infrastructure with any facts at all.

If one does a Google search using the exact words "US Infrastructure", one will not find much or anything that our infrastructure doesn't need serious addressing. What a person will find is if the infrastructure isn't addressed soon, America will pay for it in many ways.

U.S. infrastructure crumbling

News Blog: U.S. infrastructure crumbling

U.S. Infrastructure in the Emergency Lane

U.S. Infrastructure in the Emergency Lane : IMT Industry Market Trends

The Case for U.S. Infrastructure Investment

The Case for U.S. Infrastructure Investment

U.S. Infrastructure Spending: How Much Is Enough?

http://www.uli.org/~/media/Document.../Magazines/UrbanLand/2009/April/Peterson.ashx

Case for U.S. Infrastructure Investing

Case for U.S. Infrastructure Investing - TheStreet

America's Aging Infrastructure: What to Fix, and Who Will Pay?

America's Aging Infrastructure: What to Fix, and Who Will Pay? - Knowledge@Wharton

Investing in Our Common Future: U.S. Infrastructure

Investing in Our Common Future: U.S. Infrastructure | NDN

Infrastructure Decay In The United States

Wooldridge - Decline And Death Of US Infrastructure

 

[Oddball]

Been served that dreck since the '70s....It's become cliché to anyone who has been paying attention with even a modicum of a critical eye.

 

[kiwiman127]

How does the US help pay for upgrading the infrastructure?

The Benefits of Private Investment in Infrastructure

http://www.castalia-advisors.com/files/Private_Investment_in_Infrastructure_Presentation.pdf

U.S. Aging Infrastructure: Which Sectors Are Primed for Private Investing Growth?

U.S. Aging Infrastructure: Which Sectors Are Primed for Private Investing Growth?

FUNDING AMERICA&#8217;S INFRASTRUCTURE
NEEDS: PUBLIC PRIVATE
PARTNERSHIPS MAY HELP CLOSE
INFRASTRUCTURE GAP

http://www.crowell.com/documents/funding-americas-infrastructure-needs_construction-briefings.pdf

Infrastructure Investing: Full Steam Ahead?.

Infrastructure Investing: Full Steam Ahead? - Private Equity Beat - WSJ

REITs and infrastructure projects The next investment frontier?

Deloitte | REITs and infrastructure projects