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Report: 3.5M jobs ride on infrastructure funding

Kushinator

Kushinator

I'm not-low all the time
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Imagine a future of broken bridges, roads, sewer systems, power grids, airports and not enough money to fix them or to build new ones to serve an expanding population. What would that cost the United States in terms of lost jobs?

A study released on Tuesday by the American Society of Civil Engineers says the cost in terms of lost jobs would be 3.5 million by 2020. It also projected a cumulative loss of $3.1 trillion in economic output over the same period without $1.1 trillion in additional funding for infrastructure projects.

"The results show that deteriorating infrastructure, long known to be a public safety issue, has a cascading impact on the nation's economy, negatively affecting business productivity, gross domestic product, employment, personal income and international competitiveness," the report entitled, "Failure to Act," said.
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Source

There are very few Americans who will deny that the infrastructure in this country is decrepit and decaying. I truly believe one of the major obstacles in stabilizing unemployment is a general lack of infrastructure spending. But given the current (and likely future) political battle on budgets and taxes, the U.S. might be forced to take a back seat as other nations continue to lead the way in infrastructure and modernization initiatives.

Here are a few other sources relevant to the topic.

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(2)
 
Time to re-focus some spending.
 
I am skeptical of their jobs loss numbers.
 
Fisher said:
I am skeptical of their jobs loss numbers.
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It was a massive failure the first time. No reason to believe it will work a second time.

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Bronson said:
It was a massive failure the first time. No reason to believe it will work a second time.

images
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...which was because the states were going to do those projects anyway.
 
i'm in full support of a WPA-style program with the goal of expanding and repairing infrastructure, including the power grid. we spent ten years doing that in other countries; seems like it's time to do some nation building here.
 
Kushinator said:
Source

There are very few Americans who will deny that the infrastructure in this country is decrepit and decaying. I truly believe one of the major obstacles in stabilizing unemployment is a general lack of infrastructure spending. But given the current (and likely future) political battle on budgets and taxes, the U.S. might be forced to take a back seat as other nations continue to lead the way in infrastructure and modernization initiatives.

Here are a few other sources relevant to the topic.

(1)

(2)
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There shouldn't be one city in our country who doesn't have a list of "shovel ready" projects...allocating sufficient funds to whatever advanced planning that needs to be done (like architectural plans...inspections...etc.). If money should come from Washington, they should all have prioritized their projects and be ready to pull the trigger.

Spending money on our infrastructure makes one helluva lot more sense than Cash for Clunkers.
 
Bronson said:
It was a massive failure the first time. No reason to believe it will work a second time.

images
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Samhain said:
...which was because the states were going to do those projects anyway.
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Exactly--that is the rub of "shovel-ready projects"--they are already in the pipeline so all you do, at best, is speed them up a little bit with the additional funds. Certainly as an employer, I am not going to fire someone and they are not going to quit and magically survive if the road between their house and work has potholes or fewer lanes than they could have ergo I am skeptical of their numbers.
 
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