Infrastructural Problems

Infrastructure doesn't espouse the same kind of emotions that other issues in our political lexicon do. It's certainly not like abortion, an issue where everyone knows they're right. But the United States has a massive infrastructure problem, and fixing it will be a gargantuan task for a country that can barely stand taking baby steps.

Here's the current data. It's going to take $225 billion a year for decades to ensure there isn't gridlock on our nation's highways. Other estimates say that number is closer to $450 billion a year for decades just to keep our roads as they are now. And how they are now is is atrocious. According to Infrastructure.org, an infrastructure rating organization, our roads received a "D-minus Rating," and our infrastructure itself got a "D Rating." Even more troubling, the site claims the United States should invest $2.2 trillion-with-a-t over the next five years just to stay afloat.

But our roads aren't the only things that are old; our sewers need repair, too. A federal government estimate claims that we need to spend $300-$500 billion a year to fix our sewers over the next twenty years. But how much money did the country allocate to fixing sewers in 2008? $687 million.

I could go on and on. But you get the idea, and those who were in DC for the power outages don't need further reminders of how bad things can get (neither do those in India, for that matter).

Here's where I get worried. Remember President Obama's stimulus bill in 2009? Remember all the political turmoil it caused? And all that over just (relatively speaking, in terms of the problems we face) $787 billion. If we fought a bitter political war over $787 billion, then how are we possibly going to foot the bill to fix our infrastructure? It's already starting not to look good, as just this past June Congress failed to pass a long-term highway funding bill.

To cap it all off, Robert Yaro of the Regional Plan Association said that if we don't act soon (a wonderfully ambiguous timeframe), the United States will "have the infrastructure of a Third World country within a few decades." I have been to the Third World, and I would rather not drive slowly on the highway just so my suspension doesn't break falling into potholes.

We have an infrastructure problem in this country. Until we fix it, everyone can see our cracks.

The Lost Decade

I'll let the USAToday start this one off:

For the first time since at least World War II, middle-class families finished the first decade of the 21st century poorer and with lower incomes than they had 10 years earlier...

...Median household income dropped nearly $3,500 for a three-person middle-class household, to $69,487 a year, after adjusting for inflation, the Pew study said. The median household's net worth dropped 28% to $93,150. Incomes have dropped since 2000, while wealth rose modestly early in the decade before gains were wiped out by the recession that began in 2007 and the financial crisis sparked in 2008, said Paul Taylor, a Pew executive vice president.

"That the middle class always enjoys a rising standard of living is part of America's sense of itself, and it has always been true — until now," Taylor said in an interview, describing the 2000s as a "lost decade" for the middle class. "It's been 11 years since the peak in household incomes, and that covers the early part of the decade as well."

But there is more to the story. As James Lindsay shows, "In 2011, the U.S. economy generated 131.9 million jobs, that’s not only below the peak number of 138 million jobs reached just before the 2008-2009 financial crisis, it’s below the 132.5 million jobs that the economy generated in 2000."

Why is this happening? Well, the weakness of the American economy is not just an American problem. It's a global problem. Consider the fact that the last three jobless recoveries have taken longer than all the others we've gone through, and by a huge margin. Indeed, the average of all other job recoveries was around six months, and this one is currently at sixty.

Manufacturing has gone abroad, and most of our job growth has come in the non-tradable sector. In other words, we don't make anything people want (because it's not good and/or too expensive), and the American worker asks for too much money in return for her labor.

If I have a future prediction of a reckoning, it is this: the American worker, by virtue of the United States' success at turning the world into a global work force where other countries provide labor at cheaper prices, will have to accept lower wages than she is used to today. For Americans to compete internationally, we must ask for less in return for our labor. If this is true, a decline in middle-class income is likely to continue going forward.

That about sums it up. The only thing I have to add is that this article, and the current state of affairs, gives me a feeling with the same name of our current economic climate: depression.

The Foreign Policy of Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan

 According to Joe Klein, a veteran reporter for Time:

[Paul] Ryan and Mitt Romney have the least foreign-policy and national-security experience of any ticket, for either party, in the 10 presidential campaigns I've covered. (As Michael Cohen pointed out in Foreign Policy, they have the least overseas experience of any ticket since Thomas Dewey and Earl Warren in 1948.)

Even so, one doesn't need experience to have opinions on foreign policy, as Ivo H. Daalder and James M. Lindsay examine in the wonderful America Unbound about George W. Bush's foreign policy. This is the case with the Romney-Ryan ticket, as they have already expressed many of their foreign policy views. Here are some below:

Romney
- His "doctrine" will be "peace through strength," similar, if not identical, to that of Ronald Reagan. Indeed, he believes "When America is strong, the world is safer."
- On Israel, Romney wants to "keep disagreements between friends private."
- Romney likes "crippling sanctions" on Iran, but his foreign policy team seems divided on how to approach the issue of Iran's pending nuclear capabilities
- One big hole is that Romney has not yet laid out plans to deal with the euro crisis, although he has said "European socialist policies aren't right for the U.S."
- He promises to constantly drill, looking for shale gas.
- Romney has vowed to give troops whatever they need in Afghanistan.

Ryan
- Increase defense spending (like Romney).
- Cut diplomacy and development aid.
- Has yet to mention Syria.
- Believes "engagement in Afghanistan is necessary."

How you feel about the above is up to you. These are just the facts. Although one noticeable thing is that Afghanistan has been absent in this election (of course, this election is laser-focused on the economy). But, the answer may also lie in that "neither Obama or Romney have a solution" for Afghanistan. I think that might have something to do with it, too.

Burning Question (Pun Intended)

 From Bill McKibbon's excellent Eaarth (page 30):

Does modernity disappear along with the oil? It's a question worth asking, when six of the tweve largest companies in the world are fossil-fuel providers, four make cars and trucks, and one, General Electric, is, as its name implies, heavily involved in the energy industry. Just buying fossil fuels requires almost a tenth of global GDP, and almost all the other 90 percent depends on burning the stuff.

It appears there will come a time when all the cholesterol we've been consuming will give us a heart attack. Then, our lives will be walking on a treadmill and downing Lipitor with a half-useless heart. It'll still be life, but not the life we know and much harder.

And yes, that's a metaphor.

The Scariest Thing I've Read Today

The scariest thing I've read today (and it's from four years ago):

There is a 50 percent chance Lake Mead will run dry by 2021 and a 10 percent chance it will run out of usable water by 2014, if the region's drought deepens and water use climbs, the researchers said.

Lake Mead, for those that don't know, is the lake that forms behind the Hoover Dam and connects to the Colorado River. If this lake dries up, water will be "cut off...to the fifth largest economy in the world [the American West]."

Well, now I'm terrified.

Is Canada Fascist?

In the brief moment I took to breathe while laughing at the Canadian national anthem, I heard some worrisome lyrics that gave me pause:

With glowing hearts we see thee rise,
The True North strong and free!

So Canada thinks they're the true north, eh? Sounds like they're ready to "rise" to prove their point. I have an uncle, Sam, who can show Canadia who the True North really is (hint: it's the Arctic). Get ready for WWIII, where America will throw the fascists "oot" again.

Why Can't the Left Blame Obama for Anything?

Conor Friedersdorf had an excellent piece in the Atlantic yesterday asking why liberals can't seem to blame Obama for his failed policies. You should read the whole article, but here's the gist of it:

Barack Obama did win in 2008 running on a platform more liberal than the one he has pursued in the interim. Perhaps he couldn't move any farther left on immigration or health care and stay viable. But on national security, executive power, and civil-liberties issues, he campaigned and won handily repudiating Bush-era policies, only to govern to the "right" of the Bush Administration.

There wasn't a political imperative to do so. And I'm tired of that truth being obscured.

If liberals are going express horror at the GOP agenda as they enthusiastically support Obama's reelection, it's time for them to own his policies and stop trying to blame them on George W. Bush, or intransigent Republicans, or the financial crisis, or corporate campaign donations, or the desire to compromise, or an electorate that wasn't ready for the allegedly "knighted" Obama.

This likely has more to do with the fact that American society has become more tribal in terms of our politics. Indeed, we've gotten to a point where we feel "the wrong side absolutely must not win" and refuse to listen to what proves us wrong.

Well, I lean left and prefer Obama to Romney. And yet, I am willing to provide some things Obama got absolutely wrong:

1) The Drone War
2) Solyndra
3) Obama's failed tax-cut deal
4) His neglect of the Federal Reserve
5) The size and scope of the stimulus bill

Wow, I feel like a load has been taken off my shoulders! I feel like my conscience is clean enough now to complain about Bush some more. Yay!

No, but seriously, follow the facts as they are. No politician is perfect, so partisans should stop acting like their ideology is.