No, we won’t be doing it. But why? The answer is class warfare. An expansionary fiscal policy would help the wrong people — the poor and the working class.

But the rich are fighting a bitter top-down class war against their lessers. Infrastructure spending would weaken the rich relative to the non-rich; it would increase working-class power. That’s why government won’t do it until government is forced to.

If you want to understand policy decisions, class warfare is an indispensible lens through which to look at it; you can’t understand policy, or make predictions about it, without understanding class warfare.

Remember, FDR was acting to save capitalism from a revolutionary threat from below. Without such a threat, the New Deal would never have happened. It’s going to take such a threat today as well.

I really wish we didn’t have to relive the Clinton administration in such excruciating detail.

Obama’s 2012 campaign song: “It is the Dawning of the Age of Austerity, Age of Austerity…”

Incidentally, in order to maximize the pressure brought to bear on elites, I recommend — and have for years — that the left undertake a thorough examination and discussion of parecon (participatory economics). In 2011 and beyond, I believe this is the sharpest blade available to slice through the webs of classism, authoritarianism, and plain deceit in which our society is ensnared.

Denying the Keynesian model of demand-side economics is as effective as standing at the shore and ordering the tides to stop.
But all were told is that Americnas demand the cessation of tides.

Investing in maintenance now would save trillions over time, and put enough people back to work to increase consumer spending, grow the economy and lower the deficit through increased tax revenues.

Yup. The assertion makes way too much sense. Wouldn’t wanna be doing anything like that…

Also, Obama wants that reserve army of the unemployed to force wages lower.

Down by 30%.

He’s a Cheap Labor Republican who ran under a flag of convenience.

(Not that Obama won’t make some liberal sounding noises during his reelection campaign, but he will be lying.)

David you are a dreamer. The govt plans to sell to the banks our infrastructure for pennies. banks will get tax help to fix roads etc, charge huge fees to use them and make big profits doing it

Privatized infrastructure need not be maintained,because the users (us)
have no pressure that we can bring on the owners=unlike publicly
owned things, like roads. As an illustration, I traveled the Indiana
tollway a few years ago and it was filled with pot holes (near South Bend).
I was told that it had been sold to the Australians. Since it is part
of the interstate highway system,there is no really good alternative
(for the out-of-stater,anyway) to using this road (i.e. no functional marketplace).
Another example is the privatization of school busing. The company acquires
your buses,and can walk away whenever it wants (if you don’t agree to their
price increases),leaving you with non-functioning (or no) buses.

I’d say that it’s fairly clear why a pipe installed in 1903 would go ahead and stop working.

What do you think you are, some kinda plumber or something?

Almost every morning on “EyeWitless News,” we see a broken water main somewhere in the greater LA area gushing thousands of gallons into the street. (If we could engineer the process so the main breaks would occur only in Teabagger neighborhoods, maybe we could get something done.)

the difference between investing in infrastructure and investing in private enterprise is the fact that we are left with something for our investment, we’re left with water and electric works, roads, tunnels

the money isn’t spent and then gone, it’s spent and then used to the point where the investment brings us a positive return

the president needed to provide these programs to jump start our economy, he did NOT need to give our money to private enterprise

as I said in one of my favorite diaries way back when;

“all we need are some help wanted signs”

And create Public-Private funding so the banks can collect rent on the money used to pay for the new infrastructure as well as shareholders in these new guaranteed loans. Those privately owned new infrastructure projects will cost the public way more than if government paid itself directly to build them.

I have always thought infrastructure maintenance would be a great way to put a lot of people to work. But then I was wondering, do these jobs require certain skills, knowledge? Can just anyone repair a water main or a bridge? If there are lots of accountants, computer programers and other non-construction type workers out of jobs, can these people do infrastructure work? Would a lot of training be needed?

and that will require a coordinated movement with a strategy and tactics to undermine and eventually overthrow a corrupt system. Part of that strategy has to be providing an alternative world view to the public which have been dumbed down and propagandized for the last 40 years. No easy task. Tactics will have to include peaceful civil disobedience, general and local strikes, street demonstrations, etc.. Unfortunately it also requires committed leadership which seems wanting at this point in time. Where are the unions? Where are the student organizations? Where are the civil rights organizations? There seems to be the delusion that things will take care of themselves if we just keep our heads down.

OTOH, infrastructure repair, maintenance, and installations are constant and ubiquitous here in Charlotte, where the DNC will be next year. A lot for security one presumes.

Selfish and bitter citizens have been unwilling to pay the local, state, and federal taxes required to support a good and decent society. Policy isn’t at fault.

I do love snark

and I do miss the Clinton years 3 million new jobs every year, years when new job months of over 300,000 were not uncommon. Of course the economy was coming off a recession – like now.

But the GOP (and some Dems) say the Clinton years of tax law enforcement to keep jobs here were just a bubble, and living with a right wing black Democrat that pretended to be from the left to beat NAFTA rejecting Hillary is the only game in town these days.

If you mean austerity=Depression

Investing in infrastructure as job creation can only be successful if done as a PUBLIC WORKS project like WPA.

Many, including union big-shots and Wall Street construction firms, pushing for so-called “shovel-ready” infrastructure work are for the private sector doing the work. This will not create very many jobs and because of the vast corruption and profits that accompany private, publicly funded infrastructure projects any short-term employment benefits would only result in sharper economic problems down the road plus tax-payers would not get maximum development for the buck.

Once again, Wall Street would profit as we pay the bill.

Spot on

FDR’s WPA and CCC hired millions and prevented a revolution/civil war from unemployed youth demanding they and their dads deserved jobs – and we got infrastructure.

But our right wing black Democrat President loves his Reagan, so nothing similar is going to happen during Obama’s administration (Allah’s Messenger – may peace be upon him – oh I know he is a Christian, but he expects the says adoration as is given Mohammad ).

Transportation is a good area of government for progressives to learn from.

When large transportation spending bills have been passed at the state and federal levels, those dollars have often gone to boondoggle new projects while repairs and maintenance of existing infrastructure is underfunded. Until now, many progressives have signed off on this spending so long as there were also funds for mass transit, bike lanes, and sidewalks.

We would do well to learn how to advocate for sustainability, both in fiscal and ecological terms. “Fix-It-First” budgeting makes sense.

Not sure how long the link below will work. It goes to a recent topic I wrote on this topic.

http://www.dailyastorian.com/opinion/columns/across-the-bow-the-road-to-budget-priorities-is-full/article_f50e6002-b228-11e0-b22d-001cc4c03286.html

Disaster Capitalism, as Naomi Klein names it, made sure at the close of 2008 that there would be no funds, that there would be disastrous unemployment, which would decimate all local and state tax-based revenues, resulting in massive, widespread shock. I think our economy, having become essentially based and dependent on finance and financial markets, has met the same fate as Ireland’s when its potato crops failed.

I remember the problem with the Stimulus bill was it’s supply side approach to spending.
The owners of construction businesses got the cash with no requirements for hiring or training new employees and none of the money even went to the existing employees…

Also it is repulsive for taxpayers to fund such things as broadband and railways when they are just handed over to private businesses who turn around and charge us to use what we paid to build.

And there’s a ready workforce. 20 million Americans are currently collecting unemployment checks for doing nothing.

“There are pipes like this all over America and we could employ a million people to fix them…”

A communist! Right here on FDL!

Goddammit, Jane, put on your black robe, and I’ll dig out my latex Joe McCarthy mask, and we’ll gin up the new Inquisition. :o

Oh, Dave, too true, too much common sense, and too much of a precedent set by FDR for how priming the pump from the bottom up, works.

Unfortunately, some perverted, hateful, virus has gotten into our heads, and corporate profits have become the ethic on which amurka runs.

That so many blue-collar people subscribe to it is disheartening, to say the least.

“…to beat NAFTA rejecting Hillary…”

Not to mention clusterfuck-SUPPORTING hillary, which has cost us upwards of a trillion, with no end in sight. Did I mention the 4500 dead american troops, and something like a million Iraqis? If she had a conscience, she’d resign from State and go to Iraq to empty bedpans for maimed Iraqi kids.

Pap, you need to get off that horse. He got beat to death, and rightly so, about three years ago. :o)

That’s not an accurate number. If your number were true, there would be less misery and we would be a happier country. Although, I must say being unemployed is as much a full time job as a full time job, try it sometime.

http://www.dol.gov/opa/media/press/eta/ui/current.htm

Labor statistics put the number receiving unemployment benefits at 7.6 million.

Those receiving benefits and those not receiving benefits are certainly not ‘doing nothing’. Actually, they are in a lot of hurt.

However, US society in the 1930′s was significantly agrarian. Compulsory education did not extend beyond 8th grade, or age 16 if it extended to high school. And as you point out, an infrastructure was developed where there had been none.

Some or a lot of that infrastructure needs maintenance and repair, but the new and not-yet agreed-upon infrastructures are waiting to be planned, agreed to, and implemented. In the 1930s it was easy to imagine the transitions from horse to train to internal combustion, river and lake dams, and the telegraph and telephone lines along those many two dimensional concepts. Corporations and banks, by comparison to today, were also like two-dimensions.

Our brains may be inadequate to the tasks, just like our policies.

I have a mildly funny story I will leave here.

When stimulus money came to our town the city put people to work pouring ramped sidewalk corners everywhere… including many neighborhoods like mine where there are no sidewalks. I was hoping they’d come back and give us sidewalks ’cause I like to walk. No such luck.

While I thought it was a bit absurd I did realize that it’s better to put people to work than curse the darkness and do nothing.

Maybe one day I’ll get my sidewalk.

Focusing on infrastructure means overwhelmingly focusing on jobs for men, which is all the stimulus did as well.

Of course we won’t do anything like that. It doesn’t fit the plan. Think about every piece of fiction you ever read or watched that showed a dystopian future world where the population was separated in two classes. One with all the wealth and privilege and the rest living in abject poverty struggling to survive.

Most of us saw those as cautionary tales. The so-called “elites” saw them as a blueprint.

The construction sector has 20% unemployment. Plenty of skilled laborers available to do this work.

I agree – I bought the digital Naomi’s book and put it on a grand daughter’s Ipod (senior in high school and interested in economics).

The part that I did not want to believe, despite a 2 off connection to Reagan (Under Sec of Commerce under Ike General Olmstead) I had way back in 1981 and the revelations that came from that back then, is the fact planning – 20 year planning – is done by these super rich folks, despite the fact they would likely be dead when the next few billion flows into the family fortune. Even when I worked with Wall Street in the mid 90′s on “special deals” and found that my partner taking the other side was a representative – always a “Swiss citizen” – of one of the 13,000 families/persons around the world that could write, without blinking, a $5 billion dollar check. Indeed tax evasion is a game the super rich do not even think about as they pay less than 1% of their income for advisers and brokers in order to pay less than 1% of their real income as tax (indeed most of the income is not even known to the authorities).

The super rich have convinced all but the US to tax only “territorial” income, rather than worldwide income with credits for tax paid elsewhere, making the job of the tax adviser so easy that US advisers could only envy the ease with which tax liabilities were thrown into the ocean – the only chore being determining the right amount of income to expose so the “effective” tax rate paid did not cause a PR problem.

So now Durbin and Reid and Obama want to move to a territorial income tax for super rich persons/corporations that insist on claiming US residence so as to have our military behind them.

Sure Glad we elected that less of a DLCer Obama in 2008./s

I never deny that Hillary is a clone of Obama on foreign policy – so that is a horse I never got on.

But in a world of choosing the “lesser evil”, choosing Obama over Hillary was amazingly studid, IMHO.

YMMV

Ah, sidewalks! Sidewalks and front stoops provided the society with a literal secondary education, and an alternative one, and literal home schooling. Oh, and there were many, many newspapers, sometimes three editions every day. Sidewalks and SAT scores began to decline in the early 1960s.

A lot of infrastructure work also takes planners, and designers, and auditors, and people to check out the work for safety, ect, not just folk who are out there doing the skilled and unskilled labor part of it.

It’s not just jobs, it’s safe conditions for Americans. Safe water, highways that aren’t going to fall into the river or have a pothole big enough to swallow your car, gas lines in cities that aren’t on the verge of exploding, ect.

But the key to selling this is to start talking about how the lack of good infrastructure is hurting American business, and that the continued decline in it’s quality will cost American business more and more. After all, the human arguement seems to fall on deaf ears for many in America, but make it sound good for business, and you can sell it with ease.

Hillary would have been much better on domestic policies than Obama IMO. Foreign affairs not so much.

I agree – in the 30′s getting past grade school in a non-urban area was not that common. Indeed in my families world the Church and its help was the only way through high school, and college (my mom had the nuns come over and beg her mother to let them put her through college, but her mom insisted on the tradition that the youngest daughter stay home to take care of and bury the mother).

In ‘Nam we ran into the problem of “complicated” teaching for recruits that had not been challenged academically previously.

We got past that problem. I suspect we would get past that problem with the current generation – kids of all colors and shapes and sexual orientation – and ages – always seem to be much smarter than we give them credit for.

We agree.

In 1938, Harold Ickes wrote:

Daniel Webster, a conservative of his day, in a memorable speech delivered at the bicentennial celebration of the landing of the Pilgrims, ascribed the unique growth and survival of democratic institutions in this country to the fact that wealth was equitably distributed, that everyone had a real and not an illusory chance to acquire an economic stake in the welfare of the country and that, in consequence, a democracy involved no irreconcilable conflicts because both economic power and political power existed in the great mass of the people.

In other nations and at other times, the people have been forced to carry upon their straining backs a feudal aristocracy that strutted the boards as knights and barons and earls. We find that here in America we have permitted the development of an even more oppressive system of money aristocrats, or corporate earls, of ducal economic overlords. The moneyed aristocracy of American constitutes an even greater menace to our institutions than would a titled class with vintaged handles to their names. It is intolerable that the degree of our democracy should have to depend upon the degree of self-restraint exercised by a handful of men whose corporate tentacles reach their strangling length into every nook and cranny of the land. . . .

Lawless Big Business Must Be Controlled to Save Democracy, By Harold Ickes, Secretary of the Interior, January 8, 1938

Once economic and political power is removed from the “great mass of people”, we have lost democracy.

They both are and were too arrogant and spoiled, more suited to private sector authoritarian power than to public service. Hillary lost because she had too many enemies; Obama is a failure because he has no friends.

This is where they want to start, NOT END.
30%??? That’s nothing.
Sadly, most of you folks are ignorant about India.
Supposedly prospering. Except, much of their “growth” is in these BS service jobs, like customer service. Also, most of the money goes straight to the top. Do not stop at go, do not collect 200, do NOT stop at the worker. Worker’s get paid what the top wishes. Also, they have a permanent slave class, who works for pennies an hour, with no benefits AT ALL. NO healthcare, and no vacation, no OSHA, no … NOTHING!!!
That’s the end game for them.
You know how many people live in the slums there? That’s what they want. That’s the capitalism they want. Indian society has accepted it. It’s the norm. Their entire system, politics, and everything else is corrupt. Money, money, money.
They don’t want China. They want India.
There are vast areas in India, that no one talks about, that use slaves/indentured servants. And their children are REQUIRED to pay off debts, which by the way they are set up, can never be repaid. They want the Indian system.
India, thriving sex/slave trade, including children. They want India.

Back then the federal government spent untold treasure removing indigenous people and relocating or murdering them, local governments spent a comparable treasure to prevent or retrieve runaway slaves. The US bought Florida for that reason. (And the Florida Seminoles had come from Appalachia and the Ozarks.)

I understand why you think that. Because I did once as well.
But, http://firedoglake.com/2011/06/03/hillary-clinton-hosts-iraq-opportunities-party-for-war-profiteers/.
I mean come on.
And you think she would do any different than O in domestic issues?
There is absolutely no reason to believe that.
Her husband is one of the greatest corporatists ever. No way she’s not. She’s also part of Bilderberg, ie. rich SOBs who work for the devil.

It’s just a feeling that I have. No evidence except she’s a woman and a mother – she might have more empathy for people losing their homes and children going hungry. Or perhaps she would not.

Another interesting read:

Public pays price for privatization

Excellent article on fascism in America –
http://www.truth-out.org/america-held-hostage-two-party-failure-government-and-corporations/1311345019

No money for infrastructure until the unions are broken.

A government-run, ie. controlled and run by he people, program would in fact change everything.
No money to the top, straight into workers’ hands.
No matter what, keep the WPA around, even when the “crisis” is over. Have it be standard from now on.
Thus ANY unemployed can choose to enter, get paid a living wage, with benefits and a pension (not that 401k BS) and healthcare.
Then expand the SOB. Use to retrain workers. Workers retraining workers. No money to the top. It all starts at the bottom and stays at the bottom. All that cash in the pockets, means small businesses start popping up again. All over the place.
Train workers with other workers. Train them in the basics. Basic education, yes. Basic computer knowledge, yes. This applies to seniors, who should get a class, WITH NO FING COST, for stuff like computer basics and other things.
Open up community centers, purely run by workers. No money to the top. In these centers we teach classes. On what? Well the above stuff, but also … well anything. How about someone who knows cooking? Open a class, see how many people attend. If people like it, keep it. How about yoga? How about foreign language classes? How about classes on anything the people want? And pay the teachers a living wage. With benefits.
Community centers by the people, for the people, RUN BY HE FIN PEOPLE, with no money to he top. Keep all the workers’ money with the workers.

Community centers should prioritize the people in their neighborhoods. Uneducated children. Fing teach them. Gangs? Give them a choice to go the community center. You would be surprised how many would. The area needs a clean up? Pay people in the community to clean it. Revitalize it. Lease shops to small businesses WITH ALL THAT MONEY GOING TO THE COMMUNITY, not to the top. Clear the junk and garbage. Plant gardens and trees. Make the place look like the Fing garden of Eden.
F low-income housing. How about this? Need a place to live? We have it. You pay an amount that people can afford. No money to the top. Those that can’t pay? Why can’t they pay? Unemployed? Then send them to the community center for a job. If you can’t pay because … maybe you’re disabled? Well let’s see if we can’t find yo something. I mean let’s at least try. Most disabled people, just like regular people, want to carry their own weight. And still if not, then hey brother/sister, we are in this together, and you still deserve shelter. So stay. And while you’re here, we’re going to pay someone, ie. a job, to help you in the ways yo need. And maybe we can get you job along the way. People want jobs. They do NOT want to sit on their azzes all day. Yes, despite the propaganda, it’s true. Talk to people without jobs like I have.

BTW, Germany has a great system for the unemployed.
If you are unemployed, they will actually help you. They will help you with a place. A simple cheap, but safe place. They will help you find a job. Actively and purposely find you a job. They will give you a livable stipend. Their whole culture is about productivity and contribution to society. So they want everyone in the game, and they know that the if people aren’t working, society has failed them. And society also suffers. Ya, I know, socialists, crazy idea. They actually think their whole country is a society that should help each other. Crazy socialist bastards.

This is insane! Just think what a risk we’ll be taking. Just read this from the Onion:
“In a 30-minute video released Thursday, al- Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri criticized the mass transportation infrastructure of the United States, claiming significant repairs and upgrades would need to be implemented before the militant group would consider destroying any roads, bridges, or railways with terrorist attacks.”
How can you place the inconvenience of potholes, derailed trains or collapsing bridges ahead of our nation’s national security? A decrepit school is a safe school! We must put all of our resources into protecting ourselves by destroying the rest of the world before they destroy us. We must protect our precious bodily fluids…

Noble sentiments. Too many starving and homeless in this country.
But Hillary is not the answer.

Not now she isn’t. She might have been when she ran.

The “Onion” is fake news. Is there actual video showing the Al-Qaeda leader criticizing our infrastructure?

My mileage does vary.

At least Obama wasn’t stupid enough to support bush’s ginning up Iraq. He spoke against it at a time when the rest of the country, including Hillary, was drinking the koolaid like it was their mother’s milk.

Hillary was also brick-dumb enough to think that she could win the white house by smooching ass on the people who had had it for the previous utterly fucked-up 8 years. She also supported Joe Lieberman against Ned Lamont, in the Connecticut primary. If, after she did that, you could still support her, your “mileage” doesn’t vary; you’re riding in the Flinstone’s stonemobile.

I think Obama’s a failure because he, too, had a major political brainfart:

He didn’t understand that he was inheriting an either/or sitution. Either he confronted the people who nearly ruined us (HAVE ruined us, with his help) or it was a dead lock that he would be the yardstick for presidential failure. No middle ground. No “reaching out”.

I don’t believe that he came in thinking to sell us out. He’s just a political coward, and a rather stupid coward at that, since his cowardice is in process of guaranteeing the biggest political reversal in our history, and incidentally, that he is going to be that poster boy for presidential failure.

B.O., Congress, Bernanke are going to slash
fiscally and mark up reserves immensely again (?)
in continuing support of their banker donors.

They have it backward.

We experienced a debt bubble. The uber-wealthy relied on
a bled-dry middle class for keeping their returns jacked up,
but will a whole lot of misfeasance and maybe malfeasance
involved.

In part this goes back to Friedman / Schwartz — chicken / egg –
money supply / business activity — OR, extraneous factors influencing
major initial drops in MS.

I think systemic Ponzi schemes and grotesquely piggish excessive
concentrations of wealth do in fact constitute extraneous factors
at least together capable of controlling MS and business activity.

https://sites.google.com/site/evernewecon

There is a history of Hillary on Domestic that begins in the 70′s that I see you are unaware of – including her fighting for single payer in 93 when no other Democrat had the guts to push the idea. Indeed as noted in her book, the condition that Bill required before he would make her head of her task force was that she drop her push for single payer.

Actually you are correct

“Hillary is not the answer” – because she has said she will not run.

But she was the answer in 2008.

Obama spoke against a war as a State Rep in Illinois to a tiny non-influential audience. Good political move by a guy that lies very well. But you are correct that Hillary bought the “secret intel atom bomb threat”.

As to Hillary “smooching ass on the people who had had it”, I am at a loss as to what you mean. She did not go out and pick fights and she honored her long membership in the party by supporting the party’s nominee Joe Lieberman (who we agree is slime owned by the insurance companies) against Ned Lamont.

I Rather like the Flinstone’s stonemobile – very green – I think Hillary, but not oil man Obama – would approve.

but YMMV :-).

“She was the answer in 2008″

If you were a republican.

She was the ONLY chance that the GOP had, to hang onto power. Repubs and independents would have gotten out of their death beds and crawled to the polls on bleeding stumps to vote against her.

To the credit of the democratic party, they were not stupid enough, nor politically suicidal enough, to nominate her.

Your constantly trying to rehab her is comically wrong. You’re like the people saying we have to stick with Obama, because look how bad the republicans are.

I can only hope that she sticks with that “I won’t run.” in 2012. But when Obama’s numbers get into the 30′s, and people start coming out of the woodwork to have a go at him, we’ll see how things look to her, then. :o)

Whatever she did in ’93, by 2007, as has been pointed out, she was perfectly willing to keep the robber barons like Wellpoint, Humana, etc. IN the healthcare equation, instead of getting them out of it.

“I am at a loss as to what you mean.”

This is what I mean:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9H8JOMz0dNY

Unions are next to non-existent in all but a handful of states already, except in the paranoid minds of the right wing. Heaven forbid that a group of working people should have the right to organize in order to enhance their power in dealing with a company who has many, many times the power they do.

Last I noticed, undocumented workers are the best friend the anti-union companies have ever had.

And yes, I proudly come from a multi-generational union family, not that the union had much strength in my home town.

I think that employing the unemployed to patch up the American infrastructure would have enthusiastic bipartisan support – until you get into the details.

Would the Davis-Bacon Act apply?

Would the money for these projects come from existing funds or would it be new funding (and who would pay for it)?

Who decides which projects are greenlight-ed?

We have divided government right now so you first have to pick which side you want to support your rebuilding plan. Then you have to decide what you are willing to give away to get the other side on board. For most people on both sides of the aisle, the answer is, “Give away? Nothing. This is the right thing to do so quit complaining and get on board!” And THAT is why nothing gets done.

It’s actually quite easy for a Dictator to craft such a law, but unless you or I (or both) are willing to compromise – often on things that are very important to us both personally and politically – we will struggle to find common ground. Would you support your own program if the “other side” got to answer the three questions above? I probably wouldn’t either.

“This will not create very many jobs and because of the vast corruption and profits that accompany private, publicly funded infrastructure projects any short-term employment benefits would only result in sharper economic problems down the road plus tax-payers would not get maximum development for the buck.”

complete nonsense. Aside from the immediately created jobs/tax revenue, investing in roads and rail alone would create new revenue/stimulus. I can’t tell you how many contracts my customers and I have had to pass up because the infrastructure simply wasn’t there to get the product to market; and I work for a small company. The conversation usually goes like this: “how do we get it to port? Rail? nope, no connections. Truck to rail? Too expensive – need too many overweight permits ’cause the roads are crap. Truck to port? Too much gas and that’s too expensive + the roads are crap, so too many overweight permits needed and that costs too much. Ah well, would have been nice, but fuck it, we’ll source from somewhere else. Lost jobs, lost revenue, lost…. So Infrastructure spending, however inneficient, is a huge multiplier of jobs/revenue.

Make it easy for the masses: Ten years Ten Trillion on infrastructure.

One Trillion per year generates 1.6 Trillion of economic activity. One trillion is 10 million jobs. $1.6T is 16 million jobs. Unemployment is solved.

$1.6T is $400 billion in taxes (social security + state + federal). Tax people making more than $3million a year at 75% equals $400 billion. Raise corporate taxes to 50% and close loopholes equals $300 billion.

Make all projects buy American. Unemployment is solved for 10 years, new tax policy eliminates any deficit from the infrastructure. If we had a real Democratic party, we would be in the midst of a huge economic boom.

I don’t see a single call for hiking taxes to fund the debt service for the infrastructure.

Without a campaign to hike taxes, repairing and making US infrastructure world class is impossible.

What I see above of just a different version of conservative free lunch tax cut idolatry – if we go deeper in debt to build infrastructure, the tax revenue will increase so much the debt will be paid off. bull shit.

If you want jobs, campaign for and sell higher taxes, and higher taxes for everyone.

For transportation infrastructure, higher gas and road use taxes to be replaced by mileage taxes on a tolled bases – lots of open road tolling or GPS based road use recording in the car to calculate tolls.

For water and sewer, high water fees and property tax assessments.

And so on.

I like that.. simple, practical and effective… can I copy your comment and share it? please :)