Rusted Sky

It isn't popular. It isn't 'pretty'. It isn't quick. It's been mostly ignored.

Infrastructure.

Shopfloor ｻ Blog Archive ｻ Infrastructure in Need

Much of America’s transportation infrastructure is a half-century old; the Interstate Highway System was inaugurated in 1956 (after decades of planning).

But the planning and much of the construction took place before the Great Society, before Medicare, before Medicaid, before welfare, before Food Stamps, before the Conservation Reserve Program, before the Low-Income Heating and Energy Assistance Program, before the Community Development Block Grant Program, before the Manufacturing Extension Partnership, leafy spurge management grants, before HUD, the EPA, the Department of Education, etc., etc., etc….that is, before the explosion of federal spending and programs that now draw dollars that might have been spent on infrastructure.

Funny thing, though - if there were a shifting of funds from all the programs which are designed to help the poor to companies which would actually work to fix the infrastructure problems - which would have to put people to work, paying very decent wages...

There'd be hell to pay in Washington.

But something's gotta give. Without infrastructure, we've got nothing to hang our civilization on...

J.