A Further Look at…“Infrastructure Week”

“Liberty cannot be preserved without a general knowledge among the people, who have a right … and a desire to know.”
— John Adams, 1765

By M. L. Warmath

A thousand pardons, you’ll! Monday’s column got washed out in that flood of work that always seems to come in right before any holiday and usually means “somebody” has to work over the holidays. Since I last wrote, I’ve done and returned 60+ thousand words – I’m a legal and technical translator – and have six more files for about the same amount, due starting Tuesday, so that all put a brake on any other writing. I’m aware that doesn’t sound like much of a life but it’s what I do.

I’ve given some more thought about what I want to write here. I started with giving a rundown of the top stories in our government and links to where to read more. As I said then, it’s not super exciting but it is factual and keeping up with what the government does is important. (I also don’t deal well in trendy stuff, unfortunately.)

What I can do now that you all know where to look for government policy (he he) is to prattle about how I see some of the programs that are being implemented and I’ll still leave you ways to find out more about them. So, without further ado let’s take a look at the long-awaited “infrastructure week” which is no longer two weeks away but will probably last for some years and if we are lucky, it will actually be perennial.

Infrastructure’s important; let me count the ways.

While Connecticut may run on a certain donut that doesn’t start with a “K”, a modern economy runs on its infrastructure. We don’t live in isolated hamlets with 50 souls where everyone has six acres of bottomland, a kitchen garden, a few chickens, maybe a sheep or a cow, a pig and/or a horse, and knows everybody else. We don’t spin wool or flax we traded apples for with a neighbor to make our own clothes and few if any of us do a week’s laundry by hand.

In short, this is neither the 17th century nor are we wandering in the Wilderness receiving Manna (never mind pennies) from Heaven or other divine support. We depend on the “retail economy” in our everyday lives. We make, sell and/or buy stuff we need or want (or think we need or want). That stuff gets to a store or warehouse or gas station near you by road, rail, boat or air, even if that store is online. If you don’t work at home, you usually go to work by car or public transport or bike or scooter or on foot, by road or by rail. (People in Alaska or the Yukon or American Samoa, for example, also have other transport means.) If you work in the hospitality and tourism sector, your customers need the same roads, or even planes, to come to you. We need a drinking and household water supply system, and a power supply grid to provide light and heat or A/C depending on where you live, and, one way or another, to run all the equipment and gadgets we use just to get around and make things to sell and text each other and watch TV or stream films and even work online as freelancers or influencers.

I bet a whole bunch of you have worked in a sector relating to infrastructure at one point. Anyone in construction, metalworking, mining, urban planning, Amtrak, etc. is part of it, even software developers. And if you are a businessperson, you know you’d like your shop to be in a pleasant, secure pedestrian zone with regular electric tram service or your factory to have access to reliable transportation structures for shipping. Nobody opens a business in Saint Glinglin1, Nowhereland. If you have kids in school, you not only want them to go to good schools nearby, but you may need the bus drivers that take them, and maybe some of their teachers, there on the safest roads possible. You may do your banking and taxes online, and since COVID-19 even pastors and rabbis and imams and priests use Zoom.

Whether roads, rail, airports, port and river navigation systems, dams, power grids, power plants and carrier systems, water supply systems, sewage and waste treatment systems, telecom systems, safety and security networks – everything that makes up “infrastructure” is so essential that when it is faulty it affects everything else. Dilapidated or outdated infrastructure can give rise to incidents that range from being merely annoying, to being costly for businesses, to being outright deadly.

Poorly-maintained or lighted roads are a significant factor in some accidents. Hospital patients and others on ventilators or who need dialysis or other life-saving medical equipment are at dire risk in a power outage. Neglected railway systems lead to tragic and fiery crashes. Lead pipes and asbestos need to be removed and replaced and there’s still way too much of that out there. And when the mismanaged power grid in Texas failed over several days in a winter storm a few weeks ago, as many as 200 people, including children, died of exposure to the cold. Some of them froze to death in their beds.

When I think about how important infrastructure is, I am mind-blown. We take it for granted so often until we get regular flats from potholes or can’t get a bus because the network doesn’t get out to where we live, or when the Internet goes off repeatedly because the broadband is outdated and can’t handle the demand any more. Make your own list – make a game of it. Look at your property taxes as well; what do they pay for? What does your sales tax pay for? How much of your income or business tax is used for what purposes? You may think you can’t find out. But give it a try – you may be surprised at what you, or people you care about, actually get. And if you think your taxes are ill-spent, tell the right people and insist on it, but tell them what you want it spent on, too.

We’ve all heard about President Biden’s infrastructure plan, and how it will create jobs and restart the economy. It will create jobs as new structures and upgrades get underway, and it will create longer-term jobs to maintain them. It will help local shopkeepers and teachers and firefighters and hospitals. And it will offer pathways to good and environmentally sustainable employment and retraining for many people of all ages. We shouldn’t just sit back and wait on it though; we need to make sure we work at our level, in whatever way we can, to see that it gets done, and that we give credit when credit is due. You get better service when you acknowledge good service.

I’ve seen some estimates of the number of jobs created and so have you. But if you haven’t seen the entire plan, here it is: https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases/2021/03/31/fact-sheet-the-american-jobs-plan/

And that’s just an overview, not an itemized sheet.

Is that going to add to the deficit? Yes, for a while; we’re still in the middle of an economy that has been seriously harmed by this pandemic and we’re not out of the woods yet. But in the end, when businesses get back up and running and jobs are created and the cash flow goes back to a more “normal” situation, whatever that will be, it will level back out. It always does.

Look at similar situations over history; investing in the economy through infrastructure programs leads to a stronger economy. But the private and state sectors have to contribute. It can’t all be for Washington to do. Federal programs need to be backed with state, local and private-sector investments to make sure that there is not only an economic turnaround but that the economy and all of these programs are maintained (insofar as required), updated and upgraded to make sure the progress forward continues indefinitely and the jobs and benefits created are made perennial. That means corporations as well. They aren’t going to like it, but they make buck off of infrastructure and they need to pay their fair (and reasonable) share of taxes for it in return, just as we all do. And I’m saying that as a freelance businessperson paying a sizeable chunk of my turnover in various taxes. I know what I get back, and I know how my taxes help others, too, and that matters most to me.

Also, the American Jobs plan – President Biden’s infrastructure plan – announced last week is only “part one”. We will be hearing part two in the coming weeks, with more on healthcare and child care.

I believe this kind of infrastructure policy is a good thing, and it’s long overdue. I’m not saying it’s perfect and I’m not saying I won’t be firing off letters to my Senators or even to Washington to give my opinion – positive or negative, and deciding who to vote for based on overall results and oversight. But this kind of plan is the backbone of so much more that needs to be done in this country in terms of justice and equity. It won’t be perfect; nothing is. But it’s a good start and we can deal with imperfect if we pitch in and try participate in making it even better.

I used to live in France, and in France there’s a kind of a joke about “Y’a qu’a” (pronounced “yahkah”) people – you know, the ones who say “the government’s just gotta…”

I always told “Y’a qu’as” that maybe they could go and do the job themselves.

Elected leaders – and I don’t use that word lightly – are serious and experienced people trying to work with a ton of other people who have more or less experience and who are more or less cooperative, to constructively serve a whole lot of diverse other people who voted them in and another lot who didn’t vote them in and who, these days, seem to be content with criticizing but not necessarily stepping up with real, constructive, applicable solutions.

You can’t run a country easily when a good third or more of it appears to be mostly fueled by orneriness. And that’s all I’m going to say about that.

Moving right along: even if Tax Day has been postponed till May 17th, I thought this short article (link below – for information purposes only) would be interesting if you wanted to know what your federal taxes are actually spent on. It’s not mainly on infrastructure, or even on education, for that matter – far from it. As this overview points out, about 19% of federal income tax goes to what are called “other expenses”. Of that portion about 12% goes to “remaining” expenses that “include scientific and medical research, transportation and infrastructure spending, education, non-security international spending and all other categories.”

We could do with some reprioritizing of budget lines, IMHO.

https://turbotax.intuit.com/tax-tips/general/how-are-federal-taxes-spent/L6kinGuUt

So that’s it for now. Depending on how I get through my current work projects I’ll see you next week. In the meantime, I hope the above will be helpful. There will be a quiz.

Happy Easter to those who celebrate!

(1 Waves at Québécois and French peeps.)

MLW