Infrastructure. Our (USA) costs are COMPLETETLY OUTRAGIOUS compared to the global standard. We're talking multiples.
Things like the gateway project in NJ/NYC cost 4x what they should for a crappier outcome.
> The answer, I believe, has to do with American incuriosity. Incuriosity is not merely ignorance. Ignorance is a universal trait, people just differ in what they are ignorant about. But Americans are unique in not caring to learn from other countries even when those countries do things better.
I think there's a lot of truth in that; look at how almost all the discussions about healthcare ignore the successful systems in other countries. It goes beyond that, though. We shouldn't have to look at other countries to consider the possibility that we could be doing things better. But whenever it's suggested that we could make things better, there seems to be a lot of hostility to the idea and push back against it.
[1] https://pedestrianobservations.com/2019/03/03/why-american-c... [2] https://data.oecd.org/eduresource/education-spending.htm
This just isn't correct. Many majority non-white school districts are very well funded -- cities like Chicago or Washington or LA. It's simply not an issue of lack of funds.
Simply pumping more money into poorly performing school districts isn't a solution, but we continue to do so. Some of that money might be better spent on social services to help ensure stable households and early education for the kids in those areas. Or higher minimum wages to help ensure the parents don't need to work 12 hours/day to make ends meet. Etc.
And neither side of the political aisle can come to a consensus on what to change, so here we are. Le Sigh.
Vouchers might allow a few exceptional students to leave but strands the average students. And those exceptional students still need to find transport to the school across town. It also assumes a better school actually exists.
Society would be better off ensuring equal opportunity at all ages, stable households, good healthcare (including food) instead of blowing up the system to the advantage of a small number of people.
This is not an isolated incident, just forgotten. Well funded districts are often not spending on every child.
Apparently they forecast future prison populations by...3rd grade standardized test scores :(
From my observations of Canada, the reason is that it "creates jobs". It it's the classic "not-invented-here" syndrome. Noone wants to borrow the solutions of another country, or even a province or city within Canada!
Always finding some rationale to do it their own way, or do more local (inferior) studies to tick a box. Then hire a bunch of inexperienced engineers to build something that they have never done, and get x10 expensive, and 10x worse results.
All under a flag that it will create local jobs.
Imagine that's how tech would work? We want to be build a complex micro-service system, that we have never built, and we are only going to hire talent from within the distance of 10 km, to "create jobs". How would that work out?
Is the one thing that seems to be enough to shut every discussion down for a certain political group.
It has been law in many states starting in the 1960's. The original intention was to prevent too much competition which could skew incentives.
* From the perspective of an average consumer. It's a brilliant system if you're in a position to profit off it. And it has resulted in the best health care in the world (for those who can afford it).
Is '[too much] competition' not supposedly the bedrock of our Wonderful System of Market Capitalism?
NY / SF, even germany for a bit with Berlin's airport. I look at what they did in the past (huge railroad bridges in 100 days) and even now with private money (Tesla in germany is going up fast and sports stadiums go up like weeds despite their scale) the contrasts are remarkable.
Space Launch System is $20B with not a single flight. SpaceX comes along, get's no $1B/year base, get's paid a fraction of the "big players" - and has done 80+ F9 launches.
Also - success academies in NY seems to have some pretty amazing results relative to local schools. I realize some confounding factors, but if I was a parent in NY - that would be the choice if I lived in an area they served.
You might be conflating Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy. Falcon Heavy is a more applicable comparison to SLS. Falcon Heavy had one launch in '19 and two in '20.
When it comes to infrastructure, I think there are a few confounding factors. 1) Our level of risk is lower. We no longer find it an acceptable risk to lose workers at the rates that were acceptable 100 years ago and 2) the systems are inherently more complex. Even so, we tend to oversimplify them when planning [1]
That is not an argument AGAINST these things. It may be a valid trade-off that we all accept. Or it may be a power grab by some department or group. It is tough to know generally speaking.
That is true in all areas where costs are rising wildly - medicine, education, cost of building real estate in pre-COVID bay area, cost of infrastructure. Whether you think the trade-offs are justified will depend on your mood affiliation as much as anything else.
It's great that our universities are capable of turning out transformative technologies like CRISPR, but it's arguably slowing down, and it's happening at a time when our basic assumptions about what education opportunities should be available to our children. And make no mistake, they're narrowing.
Space travel may retrospectively look in a thousand years like an absolute necessity. But that will be from a perspective of inequality here on earth having exploded. And fewer people will be involved than our collectivity would like.
Infrastructure buildout in AZ is done in an incredibly efficient and cost effective manner.
Dallas is similar.
Utah’s buildout for the Winter Olympics was amazing and inexpensive.
Cali/NY/MA? Not so much.
I looked up Utah’s Olympics build. It cost $2.1 billion, and was 24% over budget. I don’t really know whether that’s efficient or not?