If we build it, they will come… How true this was in the 50s!
We had incremental tax rates of 90%+ for the wealthy; thus, we had money for infrastructure. And how did that work? We built the interstate highway system! Was it “spending” or was it a great investment?
President Eisenhower, a moderate republican, worked with a democratic congress. Part of Ike’s motive was a military component. He realized the need in the early 1900s when he was trying to move supplies along slow, winding roads which were designed for the new horseless carriage. Then in the 60s, we built or developed the Space Race. And how did that work?
I’ve said many times that virtually everything we use today had it birth or rebirth in the technology that was developed then. Prior to the space race, we had radios with old-fashioned vacuum tubes. In a very short period of time, it went from tubes to transistors to integrated circuits to subsystems. The same can be said for most materials, from glues to glamour.
Infrastructure expenditures are not “spending” items, they are and were great investments that paid for themselves many times over. Since the early years of the American Experiment, our infrastructure was what allowed our abundance.
Today, the reverse is true. We are harming ourselves over and over. We are 17 trillion behind in our investment for infrastructure. We have borrowed against our kids rightful inheritance. And, then, of all things, we want to sell off our (their) assets…. from roads to bridges, from airports to seaports and then force our kids to pay rent to use them. Next, we will want to “borrow” from our kids piggy banks.
