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Comment by M_Grey | Hacker News Reader

<Insertname Infrastructure Crisis> Could Have Been Averted

Get really really used to that headline in the US, because the way we're headed, everything from bridges to dams are going to be subject to that headline. We've neglected basic infrastructure in this country for so long, that people have grown up without realizing there's a problem in the first place.

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I was a civil engineer in the late 90s. They've been talking about infrastructure spending running short in the US since then. Nobody listens. Upkeep is expensive and nobody wants to pay for it..

occasionally a big project gets funded but for the most part it's just highways that get funding.

...And that's partly because highway funding is a leash the federal government keeps on the states. I suppose people need a few huge disasters to appreciate the need for it?

I don't get that. Every time a bridge collapses somewhere, we talk about it. During the financial crisis, we talked about infrastructure spending as a way to get more printed money in circulation.

It may be a surprise to those who don't follow the news, but what can you do about that?

We talk about bridge collapses because they happen infrequently enough to be news.

Wikipedia has the claim that there are more than 600,000 (!) bridges in the US:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_bridges_in_the_United_...

Imagine if even 0.1% of them were failing catastrophically each year (as opposed to being removed from service in a planned way).

I don't know what you mean by neglect.

If you keep overspending on new roads and bridges and sewer lines, you're going to see your maintenance bill come due.

As an example, I see sidewalks being built in the middle of nowhere, or that people so scarcely use them, that you wonder why spend money at all. I see parking lots half empty of cars, or worse.

All that means is longer roads, wider roads, longer sewer lines, and so forth. Somebody has to pay for all of that.

If a town has the room for expansion then they will plan to expand. It's cheaper to do this through farm fields than when the housing is already there. And most of this will be done with the input of the land developers.

i.e. They plan to build a 120 unit housing development so the city has to plan and fund a sewer and roads for 120 households. Sewer and roads are fixed costs if you plan for 120 units why not 500 it's only marginally more expensive. Now that plumbed land is more valuable. The next group of developers can do up to 380 units without waiting for sewer and roads to be built. A prospective buyer isn't looking to buy a house 4-5 years down the line. They have the money now and want it right away. Time of delivery effects the purchase price which is how cheap exurbs become pricier suburbs.

I'm 24, and have grown up here. First time I really heard about it was Trump at his rallies.

Then you haven't been paying attention. This is a perennial topic for both Republicans and Democrats.

Perhaps that's the case. I never paid much attention to politics before this guy came in and made it entertaining.

"Infrastructure" necessarily includes schools, which at this point are in many cases scary useless.

I feel like "useless" is too kind... plenty of them are actively harmful and dangerous.

Although there's a few bright spots, the stories I hear about the "No Child Left Behind" generation are terrifying.

Standardized testing has destroyed everything and the current education secretary is going to burn what's left of the system to the ground in the name of profit.

The dream of an electorate too stupid and uneducated to grasp even a basic consensus reality is going to be arriving in a hurry.

Schools are more similar to prisons than infrastructure.

Heh, I just started my kid in a private school.

For all of the hate that Trump gets (I personally think most of it is earned), he has touched on some really important issues that have been ignored for a long time. Infrastructure is one of those.

Then problem is not that he's 100% wrong, the problem is that when he's right it seems to be of the "Broken Clock" variety. When there is little rhyme or reason to the views he takes, he's bound to end up in a few positive places (such as today, condemning anti-Semitism).

The problem with Trump is that they're only positive in these highly isolated, episodic ways.

That sounds like a lazy way to dismiss a guy who maybe deserves more credit than he gets.

It's painful to extend credit to a man with no moral compass, no demonstrated capacity for learning, no comprehension of the damage he does, no understanding of history, no concept of loyalty to anything outside of himself.

What does Trump deserve credit for?

Are you going to try and find "the problem" with anything he deserves credit for?

Let me get this straight... you want the person to whom you're replying, to guess at what achievements someone else might claim for Trump, and then guess at any problems there might be with them?

No, I was accusing OP of setting a trap wherein no matter what someone puts, they will attempt to discredit it.

Can you at least see how that kind of thing isn't conducive to a useful discussion, but is really just a way to stop someone from saying things you don't want to hear?

It seems to me "the problem" is being criticized for asking a question. How can I expect to understand someone with differing views if I am unable to ask questions?

I was just pointing out that your "question" was likely just a trap. If I say "Trump gets X right" you'll reply "The problem with this is..." and proceed to show why Trump doesn't actually get X right. It doesn't really matter what X is, you'll find some way to discredit it. It's not just you, either, republicans did the same thing to Obama finding problems with everything he did.

I'm aware what you were doing, but you still seem unaware of what I was doing: asking a question. You're disparaging me for my curiosity.

You seem to know everything already, but I'm not that sure of myself, so I ask questions to try to learn more.

What do you believe he deserves credit for, that he doesn't get? Please be extensive, and specific.

Trump is the only person I've ever seen make three contradictions in a single sentence.

The only thing consistent about the man is his inconsistency (and his love of Russia, apparently). He's the political version of how you can prove anything if you assume a logical contradiction.

Of course he's touched on important issues. He has touched on all sides of virtually all issues. He wants to spend $1 trillion on infrastructure, increase military spending, leave Social Security and Medicare intact, cut taxes, and balance the budget. This sort of obvious insanity does not deserve praise.

I agree that a lot of what he says and does makes no sense. I was just showing disdain for the "broken clock" insult which is so easy to throw around.

I don't get it. Sure it's an easy thing to throw around, but any brief criticism is. Shouldn't your assessment be based on whether it's based on something of substance, not whether it's easy?

It's basically saying "I often disagree with this person, so when I agree with them I refuse to admit that they have some virtue and deserve credit for it - they are still broken and bound to be correct sometimes out of pure chance." You don't see how that's kind of pathetic?

No, because that's not how I interpret it at all. I already explained how I interpret it: since he takes virtually every position possible, even contradictory ones, without any apparent thought or reasoning, any positions which are good are that way purely by coincidence, and therefore aren't worth anything.

The proverbial broken clock isn't useless because you disagree with broken clocks and refuse to acknowledge when they're correct. They're useless because they have no actual connection to the information they purport to convey, so even when that information is correct, it's still useless.

If I make a random number generator that prints out values between 15,000 and 25,000, I will sometimes correctly predict the closing value of the Dow Jones Industrial Average for the day. That fact is not worth a damn, though.

The original poster you replied to already went to the bother of backing that buzzword/phrase up.

> the problem

Instead of enumerating all of "the problems" sometimes it can be healthy in a discussion to acknowledge that someone got something right with no strings attached. By always villainizing people you disagree with, you contribute to the partisan polarization issue we currently have

I'm really tired of people trotting out this old, "Be positive, you're part of the problem!" crap. Be realistic about the society you live in, which is a fairly malignant plutocracy, and stop selling the notion that the only thing separating us is the separation between us.

The problems we have are longstanding and systemic, not some recent attitude shift or problem getting along.

I'm happy to acknowledge the good things Trump does, in the unlikely event that such a thing ever occurs.

I can't acknowledge that he got this right, when he has no real concept of what it would look like, no plan to get it done, no idea of how to pay for it, and there's pretty much no chance it'll actually happen.

Pretty much every President and Presidential candidate has talked about infrastructure for decades. Talking about the broad concept isn't new or useful, actually having a useful substantive policy proposal is what is needed (and not just in one office, since it takes a number of different institutions to get the kind of things done US infrastructure needs.)

The problem isn't an absence of talking about infrastructure, it's bad plans, good plans that don't get passed in Congress or that get underfunded, and members of Congress not being interested in infrastructure outside their own district except to the extent that that it provides an excuse for pork-barrel spending in their district.

Yes Trumps loves some infrastructure. He loves it so much that the first act of his Dept of Transportation was cancelling a long-planned $700m project to electrify Caltrain. Sad!

http://www.bizjournals.com/sanjose/news/2017/02/17/feds-dela...

It's been talked about a lot for a long time. But nothing ever gets pass congress.

Obama tried to pass a lot of infrastructure spending as part of the 2008 Stimulation package, but a lot didn't make it into the final budget.

Everyone wants it fixed, but no one wants to pay for it.

Many states fund their roads and bridges via a gas tax. But no one wants to raise the price of gas. So nothing gets fixed through that channel either.

It's a real problem in the US and our divisive and nut job "party first" politics.

Some states divert a % of the gas tax to other budget lines instead of transportation infrastructure.

Then people want to either raise the tax or resist against it without realizing that 100% of the gas tax should be 100% for what it is originally intended to be.

You can find numerous examples by googling Gas Tax Diversions such as this one:

https://www.irtba.org/GasTax

All states spend much more on roads than they take in on gas taxes, so the issue of whether gas taxes are "diverted" is moot. Every state also "diverts" a huge amount of general revenues to road building and maintenance. To stay with your example of Illinois, which recently passed a "lockbox" ballot measure for road funds, tolls and fuel taxes take in 1.6 billion a year but the state spends over 4 billion a year just on road maintenance alone, not even counting ancillary expenses like DMV, State Police, etc.

Obama tried to make it happen for a long time:

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2013/03/obama-c...

Tip for the future: be more specific in comments.

It seems you are talking about this crisis, other commenters are talking about infrastructure crises in general.

Obama tried to convince congressional Republicans to do an infrastructure bill for all eight years of his presidency. Republicans refused to even try to find common ground. Obama talked about it a lot, too, during both of his campaigns.

Thats definitely true. However, there were things he could have done to try and fix it. For example, he passed Obamacare through without any regard for Republican thoughts. He could have done the same for infrastructure, in fact, i'd argue the infrastructure spending would have been more in line legally and he would have had less fighting.

They did a $100 billion infrastructure package right at the start of the term, before ACA:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Recovery_and_Reinvest...

This is simply not accurate. The ACA is a deep, deep compromise compared to what liberals wanted, and was in fact largely modeled on the Republican plan crafted by Mitt Romney in Massachusetts. If Obama had crafted Obamacare without any regard for Republican thoughts, we would have government provided universal healthcare. The fact that obstructionist Republicans decided to oppose the bill in the end does not reflect the fact that it was passed after much consultation with the right and is, indeed, a compromise.

During the first two years of his presidency his party controlled both houses of Congress. He didn't need Republicans to get it done.

> During the first two years of his presidency his party controlled both houses of Congress.

Not with the votes to break a Senate filibuster, but it's worth noting that something of an infrastructure bill was passed at that time (as part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, which also included non-infrastructure stimulus), with no Republican votes in the House and exactly the number (3) of Republican votes minimally necessary to break a filibuster in the Senate.

I live in a liberal bubble and hear about infrastructure woes often enough, for example from John Oliver here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wpzvaqypav8

Where is the "here" you speak of? I've lived in the Rust Belt and Appalachia for most of my life (I'm 28), and I've watched infrastructure rust and fall apart this whole time.

Infrastructure and transportation has been a significant issue in US elections since at least 2008 (see below). Historically, democrats have sought significant public investment for infrastructure; republican proposals have preferred incentivizing private investment. So while everyone agrees that it needs to happen, partisanship prevents anything from happening.

Official Democratic & Republican Party Platforms: http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/platforms.php

Occurrances of the word "infrastructure" in party platforms:

2016 D: 23, R: 3

2012 D: 26, R: 11

2008 D: 28, R: 6

2004 D: 4, R: 12

2000 D: 5, R: 5

"Infrastructure" as...

Prominent Issue (i.e., specific paper or plan released):

Clinton 2016 -- https://www.hillaryclinton.com/issues/fixing-americas-infras...

Sanders 2016 -- https://berniesanders.com/issues/creating-jobs-rebuilding-am...

Trump 2016 -- (dead link) https://www.donaldjtrump.com/policies/an-americas-infrastruc...

Obama 2008 -- (dead link) http://www.barackobama.com/pdf/issues/FactSheetTransportatio...

Minor Issue (i.e., some mention):

Romney 2012 -- https://grist.files.wordpress.com/2012/01/believeinamerica-p...

McCain 2008 -- (dead link) http://www.johnmccain.com/Informing/Issues/CBCD3A48-4B0E-486...

Kerry 2004 -- http://www.4president.org/brochures/2004/johnkerry2004brochu...

Article comparing Obama/McCain 2008: http://www.dailykos.com/story/2008/9/6/589460/-

Really people need to quit over exaggerating the bridge issue and realize most of that is driven by groups whose main source of income is heavy construction. First the bridge problems are down to nine percent of all bridge from a high of over twenty percent in 1992. Second not all bridges or roads are under the domain of the federal government and nor can it dictate that the order they are worked on.

you want some real neglect, go look at all the heavy rail built for city rail. Washington DC is a poster child for deferred maintenance and so are the cities of Portland and Seattle who always seem to want money for new stuff.

Not everything you read in the news is as dire as it is presented and special interest groups are well versed on how to pull the right heart strings.

Is this to say everything is perfect, no, but it certainly is not as dire as presented and needs to be rationally examined and prioritized.

You know that not all infrastructure is bridges and roads, right?

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