Rearranging The Deck Chairs

Listening to the "news" and reading the usual sources on the internet has become surreal as the summer winds down. The key word lately is infrastructure. The President and the Democrats launched some initiatives that have no chance of being approved by Congress because they have to run for re-election on something, especially with underemployment the highest it's been since World War II.

With Democrats facing an increasingly bleak midterm election season, Mr. Obama used a speech at a union gathering on Labor Day, the traditional start of the campaign season, to outline his plan. It calls for a quick infusion of $50 billion in government spending that White House officials said could spur job growth as early as next year — if Congress approves.

That is a big if. Though transportation bills usually win bipartisan support, hasty passage of Mr. Obama’s plan seems unlikely, given that Congress has only a few weeks of work left before lawmakers return to their districts to campaign and that Republicans are showing little interest in giving Democrats any pre-election victories.

Central to the plan is the president’s call for an “infrastructure bank,” which would be run by the government but would pool tax dollars with private investment...

The details of the plan will come as no surprise to DOTE readers—

Specifically, the president wants to rebuild 150,000 miles of road, lay and maintain 4,000 miles of rail track, restore 150 miles of runways and advance a next-generation air-traffic control system.

Oh, my! If you require additional proof of the utter bankruptcy of political thinking in the United States, you need not look any further than this. My recent post Ass Backwards America described the tragic state of public transportation in the United States. I wrote it up before Obama's proposal, and here's what I said—

These public transit cuts will likely be permanent in almost all cases. The ongoing recession presented a unique opportunity to rebuild America's public transportation system. We tore down the one we used to have in the 1950s to build roads & highways. And we never stopped building roads & highways. And when it came time to "stimulate" the economy, we poured money into building roads & highways. We built roads & highways as though the oil would never run out, as though gasoline was just another Free Lunch. After all, we are Americans. We are entitled. We deserve that Free Lunch.

And what of the taxes we put on all that gasoline we burn? All the revenue goes toward building or repairing roads & highways. In fact, we've built so many roads & highways since the 1950s that the revenue from the gasoline tax is no longer sufficient to keep them in good repair.

Who said this isn't a Great Country?

I had our precarious oil supply situation in mind when I wrote that. If the global economy ever does return to robust demand growth, we will face another oil price shock. But building public transportation to mitigate a crisis that may occur some years from now requires wisdom and long term thinking, neither of which exists in American politics.

Before I wrote about the crisis in public transportation, I pointed out that basic services in America are literally falling apart in Our Crumbling Infrastructure — Patch & Pray. This problem only recently came to Barry Ritholtz's attention because a civil engineer called up a talk show Barry was on and told him about it. I'm quite sure the only reason they were talking about infrastructure at all was because of President Obama's initiative.

Barry's blog The Big Picture is immensely popular—only the fatuous Paul Krugman and Dealbook at the New York Times get more traffic in the business & economics realm—so I'm glad he's starting to see ... The Big Picture. OK, I'm a little bitter, I admit it. At least Ritholtz made the graphic below, which I didn't have when I wrote my story back in July before the bogus infrastructure proposal.

The report card on America's infrastructure. We need to invest $2.2 trillion over the next five years to get things back to where they should be.

Obama's proposal is just more election year bullshit. As we would expect, there is nothing in his proposal that addresses problems with wastewater, transit, solid waste, public parks & recreation, levees, inland waterways, hazardous waste, energy, drinking water, dams or bridges. 

No! We propose a plan to rebuild 150,000 miles of roads & highways instead.

Only those who were alive during the Great Depression remember times as hard as those we are living in now. For almost all of the people alive today, these are uniquely difficult & dangerous times. But nobody alive today, including those who remember the Great Depression, has ever witnessed such immense stupidity Human Folly on such a colossal scale.

The ocean liner has hit the iceberg, and the ship is slowly but surely sinking into the water. Few notice, and the ones who are proclaiming the ship is sinking, the ship is sinking! are generally ignored. I would like to think that this Surreal Denial will be overcome, but the absurd public discourse in the United States tells me that Reality will not intrude on our Happy World anytime soon.

We will continue to rearrange the deck chairs on the Titanic until one day in the perhaps not-so-distant future, the ship will, in some metaphorical sense, disappear beneath the waves altogether.

Update

I thought you might enjoy this Tech Ticker video For Better or For Worse, "Let’s Get Real!" Says Scott Bleier.  Although Scott has only a limited perspective on the Empire's Decline, he is still willing to call bullshit on green shoots, double dips, recovery summers, and all the rest. Of course, Scott can't use the word bullshit, but I can  

Comments

[Matt K]

I'm confused about the math on this one... if all of that $50 billion dollars was just put towards roads (ignoring rail, runways and upgrading air traffic systems), that would be $333K per mile. I did a quick google search and could only find one road project that comes in even close to that number - most are at least $1 million a mile for rebuilding/widening/etc. So which roads are these that are being rebuilt that cheaply?

"wisdom and long term thinking, neither of which exists in American politics" -
I would argue existing in America period, which is weird given how much as a nation we've changed in 200 years why anyone would think that we'll just stop changing now and everything will stay as it is forever...

[TonyWeddle]

And then he comes out with making tax breaks for the rich permanent, at a cost of $200 billion dollars over two years. Where, on earth, does Obama think his government is going to find another $200 billion, never mind $50 billion for this crazy scheme.

I was amazed that he talked in the usual American way of BIG IS GOOD, so he proclaimed the idea of rebuilding enough roads to stretch three times round the world. And then added a measly 4,000 miles of rail track, barely enough to have one line stretching from coast to coast.

[jcg1969]

One of the frustrating things is having a solid sense (because of this blog of course Dave :)) that the ship is sinking, but living among people going on as though things are in a funk and will improve. I myself am lulled into hearing $50B for infrastructure on NPR and thinking "great" and then off to work. But in my heart and contemplative mind I know we are sunk... in my field I see obscene obesity, broken children, jobless and hopeless adults, pathetic self-esteem...I don't need the Big Picture to see it. But we need to have a sense that others know too: We are croaking.

[Jimmy]

50 billion dollars could build hemp processing plants across the country to create jobs, food, fuel and rejuvenate the united states. People could even do this themselves if they wanted to, if they get the appropriate licence. It seems to the observer that america simply is not coherent enough to organise a response to its problems, which are primarily energy related.

Bring back hemp and america can rejuvenate. the toys arent needed, just cheap, renewable transport fuel for society to circulate.

[Anon]

It is incredible that americans would pour yet more of its faux-wealth into, get ready for it, roads and airports. With only lip-service paid to rail\mass transit. In a way, it was almost a forgone conclusion that roads would be at the top of the list. America utterly destroyed its cities and towns decades ago at the behest of corrupt oil and auto cartels. At this this point, your cities are mostly useless now for any sort of train\mass-transit solutions. Let the roads and airports keep crumbling away,in the long run, youll come out better for it. You cant afford them and at this point, they cost you far more in wasted energy, pollution, lost productivty, than they will ever return.

[Ed Breguet]

Ludicrous. I barely finish expatriating out of the US and this is what I see being done with fifty billion. Good thing I gave up on that place. The sad part about it is that it does need better roads along with the railroads and airports as well. Heck, that country needs everything. It is the absolute worst infrastructure I have seen in any western industrialized country. But I cannot place full blame on gvt. It is the people as well. So long as people keep paying Loire Valley chateau prices for small apts in San Diego and not care about the crumbling city surrounding the same apt, this will keep going on. It's a me me socitey where the full extent of a citizen's concerns ends at the walls of his gated community. American government is just a reflection of this. I have never lived in any place in America that isn't a vacation resort/retirement community. Palm Beach, Miami, Scottsdale, San Diego, etc... And in all those places there was always that other side of town not shown on the brochures. And seldom did I ever see anybody saying one thing about the crumbling or non-existent infrastructure in those places. And these were the nicest places. Americans still do not care. We in here do. But most don't. And they still sit there waving the flag in stupid pride. The funny thing is that in some of the best run places in the world with the lowest unemployment rates right now, one has to struggle to see one flag.