The United States is falling dramatically behind much of the world in rebuilding and expanding an overloaded and deteriorating transportation network it needs to remain competitive in the global marketplace, according to a new study by the Urban Land Institute.
Burdened with soaring deficits and with long-term transportation plans stalled in Congress, the United States has fallen behind three emerging economic competitors ”” Brazil, China and India, the institute said.
Yes, transport in India really is, er, wonderful.
RE: China – I saw a recent news article the China has actually overspent on infrastructure projects, and they have lots of expensive white elephants. This will come back to hurt them later.
As for India, it has been a few years since my last business trip, but it is easy to be high on the spending curve when you are starting from essentially nothing. I must say, though, my travel by train was one of the best experiences I had in India – I highly recommend it.
When the wealthy thought they had a responsibility to help the USA in ways beyond the defense budget, their tax rate provided the income that provided a common inheritance that has benefitted all kinds of entrepreneurship for the next 60 years. Our current wealth is based on that former sacrifice, one that has been diminished by the myth of individualism, entitlement, and a lack of will to share in the sacrifice of most Americans.
Perhaps some conservatives are OK with the diminishment of American power while the Democrats are in office, in part because there’s no upside to having the Democrats take any credit for rebuilding things.
Last, there are probably going to be white elephants – all sorts of industries, and governments, make mistakes. Still, the benefit of keeping people working is one of the better ways to ensure that money keeps moving.
The “shovel ready jobs” were a sham.[url=http://www.investors.com/NewsAndAnalysis/Article/572443/201105171800/Stimulus-Cost-1-Mil-Private-Jobs-.htm ] It turns out that the trillion dollars spent on the Pelosi-Reid-Obama stimulus package created 450,000 (short term) government jobs and lost a million private sector jobs. [/url]
In Texas is correct. T[url=http://www.economist.com/blogs/gulliver/2011/02/high-speed_rail_china ]he high speed rail in China is a financial boondoggle.[/url] Obama’s high speed rail is a dog. Just like obamacare where he found a failing program (romneycare) and emulated it.
[i]When the wealthy thought they had a responsibility to help the USA in ways beyond the defense budget, their tax rate provided the income that provided a common inheritance that has benefitted all kinds of entrepreneurship for the next 60 years.[/i]
Not really. There were numerous tax shelters and deductions that were abolished by TFRA. Tax rates that exceed 50% result in the wealthy just taking a year off, sheltering income, capital flight, etc.
#5 – you’re talking 1982. The marginal tax rate during Eisenhower was 91%. Note that we underwent unprecedented growth – and the birth of the middle class – from the end of WWII to 1973. After that, wages for most people became stagnant, while productivity increased. After 1980, almost all the additional wealth made went into the hands of the top 10%.
The problem with this is not merely that – the more money you have, the more important you want a responsible, effective government. It is that at some point, the powerful can rig the system. They provide powerful financial incentives to ensure that anything done to check their political power is mitigated. Money physiologically does to the mind what crack does. So the public has an interest in ensure that the republic is not run by people who are addicted to the substance.
#4 – the article arbitrarily points to a study that discredit’s the multiplier effect, which is a part of economics that is empirically verifiable. I’m not sure why I’d trust ideologically motivated economists and not the CBO, Moody’s or Global investors. At the end the economist argues, glibly, that government spending is different than private sector spending. I find that intriguing. For the local deli doesn’t distinguish between teachers and financiers. A contractor takes a job from both a developer and from the government. Sending is spending. Anything else is simply an ideological point.