Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2017/09/07/trickle-down-flooding.html
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No can do. Sorry, “job creators” need that dough. Public investment is the public’s responsibility, not mine.
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Like that’s a bad thing, come on.
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this is the result when you have the top earners in taxable income paying the same or even lower rate than the bottom.
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Infrastructure deficits should be treated with as much seriousness as financial deficits.
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SimCity is surprisingly accurate in some regards.
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Al this “build a wall” shit should be turned into “build some roads and bridges”.
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But wait, there’s more!
When interest rates are low, projects to fix infrastructure aren’t too bad, but it never gets spent fixing 100-year-old pipes. Instead it goes to fancy new cherry projects.
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If infrastructure was important, the market would take care of it.
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When importance is helped to be defined by sectors of humanity that aren’t, such as speculators, it is hard not to laugh
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It is and it does partly through taxes. I know this is just some snark, but most people who are pro-capitalists don’t think it is the answer for EVERYTHING. It requires a balance. It also behoove the government to keep the infrastructure robust because it promotes a strong economy on many levels, and a strong economy is how the government gets its money for stuff. But too many people are being short sighted on this.
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Gee, it’s almost like manmade climate change is a real thing.
Combined with human short-sightedness and greed, what could possibly go wrong?
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The invisible hand is your friend - unless he slaps you.
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Tell that to literally everyone in office since the 1980s.
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I’ll make it even easier. Infrastructure deficits are financial deficits, because the only thing missing is the money. There is no shortage of workers, or of steel or concrete. Only money, and the political will that makes it move.
Remember when we could put a man on the moon? Now we can’t even build a bridge.
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THIS!
Taxation revenue for things society wishes to fund (e.g. defence, law and order, education, health - yeah I know, the US is a special case in that it seems that as a society it does not want to fund some of these) is in itself, in significant part, a ‘return on investment’ from the investment that a government makes in infrastructure. A government that makes no such investment sees its economy weaker, with less growth and a lower tax base. It is sad that “shareholder value” has captured business to the extent that lower taxes are seen as the higher objective and the huge subsidy businesses get via government investment in infrastructure is assigned zero value.
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To be fair original interstate highway system was being built between 1956 and 1991. It takes less to maintain it than to build it.
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DIdn’t 
fix all this in the first 100 days?
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The headline makes it sound like these hurricanes are helping out by clearing away the rubble of our aged infrastructure, making it easier for us to build new, better infrastructure.
Thanks, Harvey!
(Woah, chill, Irma. You’re getting a little over enthusiastic I think.)
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