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Politics : American Presidential Politics and foreign affairs -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Jim S who wrote (25703)	2/4/2008 5:46:56 PM
From: TimF	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 71588

The problem with such investments is that when you determine them by the political process (esp. special interest pork type process like that bridge proposal for Alaska, but even a more open general interest political process) they are far less likely to be good investments than when the people making the investment face the real possibility of direct gain or loss from it. Which doesn't mean that I am not in favor of infrastructure spending by the government, but I'd like to see more of it move to the private sector, and generally I find a lot of flaky ideas for government spending get justified as "investments"

To: Jim S who wrote (25703)	2/5/2008 2:18:09 AM
From: Peter Dierks	Respond to of 71588

You make some excellent points. Yes some of the projects in the past were ambitious. But the Golden Gate Bridge and the Key Bridge opened up areas that were able to be developed and also serve as transportation corridors. For example the bridge to nowhere was designed to only open up a single island. If it was part of a significant island hopping project like the Florida Keys highway it might have a much greater societal value. The Eisenhower Interstate Highway system was a copy of a public works project in Germany. It was part of the military strategy of Germany to remove transportation impediments for military transportation. Just enough people saw the potential value that such a system would unlock in the US to get the project started.