Infrastructure Investing

Infrastructure used to mean roads and bridges and maybe tunnels. Now it means anything physical that sits or rolls on the earth. It's a bit lengthy, but below is a breakdown of Biden's Infrastructure Investment Plan with a few comments (with some thanks to Epoch Times.).

The Biden $2.3 trillion Infrastructure Plan

• Transportation $621B

$115B – roads and bridges
$85B – modernize transit systems
$80B – repair Amtrak
$174B – invest in electric vehicle markets [subsidize Tesla, GM, Ford, Toyota???]
$50B – 500,000 EV chargers by 2030; electrify 20% of school buses; et al [these cost much more than the current parking meter types to handle tens of millions of EVs; an estimated $50,000 per station ($25B) could be woefully short. Could take 50,000 stations to handle just the Biden school buses. Further, if 25% of vehicles are electric by 2030 that’s 125 vehicles per station which won’t fly]
$20B – road safety
$17B – inland waterways, etc
$25B – airports and FAA
$20B – reconnect separated neighborhoods
$25B – projects too big or complex to describe

• $111B – revamp electric grid for carbon free electricity [not evidently to allow the 500,000 EV charging stations to work, though]
• $100B – build and upgrade public schools [doesn’t say but the thought was to improve carbon footprints aka “energy efficient”]
• $180B – R&D to address climate “crisis” [whatever that crisis might be]
• $300B – strengthen manufacturing supply chains [whatever that means], including $46B to jump start clean energy mfg. [Obama’s Solendra or Cuomo’s Buffalo Bill Plan anyone?]
• $400B – access to health care by aged and disabled [$400B??? Really??]
• $213B – produce, preserve, retrofit 2 million housing developments, mostly to improve carbon footprint [over $100,000 per housing unit!]
• $100B – high-speed broadband for 100% coverage
• $100B – workforce development
• $111B – replace all remaining lead pipes
• $25B – upgrade of child care facilities
• $18B – modernize veteran hospitals and clinics
• $12B – community college facilities
• $10B – federal buildings

Other things mentioned but costs not specified:

o New subsidized job program for long-term underemployment
o Change sub-minimum wage provisions of Fair Labor Standards Act [effectively making it easier for the feds to raise the minimum wage] and expand access to “competitive and integrated [racial]” opportunities [simultaneously somehow]
o Ensure all workers are free to join a union [effectively do away with open shop state laws]
o Ensure employers offer good jobs with fair and equal pay without discrimination and harassment [fair and equal pay without discrimination and harassment is already a legal requirement since the 1960s or so; “good” is a new thing –how that will be defined?]
o Spur housing construction in underserved neighborhoods
o Ensure new jobs created in clean energy, manufacturing, and infrastructure are “open and accessible” to women and “people of color” [how is “open and accessible” different from non-discriminatory?]
o Invest in job training for ex-prisoners

 

Looks good.

 

Shouldn't the private sector that profit from these upgrades be the ones paying for them. Like broadband and internet connections and electricity generation, electric vehicle charging stations, we didn't pay for gas stations the oil companies did. WE need AFFORDABLE HOUSING for the poor and middle class, current real estate values have gone through the roof putting most of it out of reach.

 

• So, being generous about 1/3 of the spending is really infrastructure. Lots of WTF spending

 

Nothing for the sewer system...? I should mention that I have plenty of work, so this isn't me trying to get anything for myself (I work in the sewer)... but which of these things listed above is more important to the well-being of society than keeping the sinks draining and toilets flushing? I personally can attest to the fact that our nations sewers, overall, are not in great shape...

 

• Being liberal but reasonable about 14% of the $2.3 trillion is for actual infrastructure. I don't consider investing in EV markets, building charging stations, electrifying school buses, road safety, or reconnecting neighborhoods as true infrastructure.

ps I don't know why the bullet sticks......

 

How about all those that need to replace their septic fields???

 

111B is dedicated above.

 

“(whatever that means)”. I don’t know if Epoch Times added this comment but it means stop ceding markets to China. We can compete and manufacture energy products in the states. We definitely could use the jobs.

 

I don't support any new roads. Repairing ones we have is fine.

 

Sewer systems have very few lead pipes.

 

That infrastructure plan sounds good to me.

 

Nope, we do what needs to be done.

 

That was my commentary. I didn't know what is meant by manufacturing supply chains; still don't.

 

Would you mind expounding on that? Who or what makes you believe the plan will "provide little value?"

https://www.epi.org/publication/the...ts-from-increasing-infrastructure-investment/

 

You mean the lead pipes? Thats water pipe. Sewer is concrete and ductile iron.

 

People are taxed for being connected to the sewer system, so tax money should go to its maintenance. Septic systems are paid for privately, so they should be maintained privately.

...but a lot of the money being spent in this bill would be far better spent buying folks new septic systems, if there was a cost effective way to objectively determine who actually needed a new one vs who just wanted a new one for free.

I suppose allocating funding to help people replace their septic would work... people who need a new one paying some of the cost, and people who don't actually need a new one wouldn't bother then.

 

Nope we have a piss poor history of doing what needs to be done.

 

If we used all the money sent to foreign countries, all the money spent protecting other countries, all the money spent on illegal aliens, and all the money spent on the War Against Poverty, we would have the money for modern infrastructure. There would not be a slum area in any USA city and our transportation system would be second to none. We could be the most modern country in the world.

 

Infrastructure Investing

Government doesn't invest. It spends. We would do well to call it what it is.

 

Why don’t you actually look up the meaning instead stating what the right thinks it should be when it still does nothing to support it.
Infrastructure......
the basic physical and organizational structures and facilities needed for the operation of a society or enterprise.

In case you don’t know, to build infrastructure you need labor. To support labor, you need reasonable child care so people can build infrastructure. I know dictionaries are a foreign entity for the right to comprehend, but try.

 

Nothing like a war over semantics, huh?

 

You mean a willingness to completely disregard it ? The right fails to use English, you know, the language they want everyone to understand, and they don’t.
Up doesn’t mean down....