As Vox’s Matthew Yglesias points out, the problem with high infrastructure costs is that they force us to
debate the wrong things. If costs were reasonable, even skeptics would
probably agree to fix roads and build better trains. But when the price
of maintaining high-quality infrastructure is ridiculously high, the
issue gets divided into two camps — a pro-building contingent that
advocates biting the bullet and overspending to maintain transportation
networks, and an anti-building group that throws up its hands at the
price tag. When this is the debate, the country loses either way,
because it ends up either spending too much money or living with
potholed roads and trains that never arrive.
Read more at:
The U.S. Has Forgotten How to Do Infrastructure
The U.S. is in the grips of exactly
this sort of dilemma. For some mysterious reason, the same mile of road
or train track costs a lot more to build in the U.S. than in other rich
countries like France or Japan. When it comes to trains, the disparity is particularly egregious. During the past few years, people who pay attention to this problem have catalogued a list of potential culprits. But none of these is really satisfying.
Read more at:
The U.S. Has Forgotten How to Do Infrastructure
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