A January 2020 blog introduced the problems with US infrastructure. This time, some fundamental explanations of infrastructure would appear useful given the resistance brewing about President Biden’s latest proposal.
Two prevailing arguments against the current proposal are: 1) it will cost money; i.e., raise taxes; and 2) it includes things other than cement and steel which must mean it goes beyond infrastructure. First, no kidding it will cost money. A more sensible question is whether it will be worth it. Second, the definition of infrastructure must evolve as society evolves and it is thus no surprise that infrastructure today is more than cement and steel. A reasonable definition of infrastructure is ‘the network of support that allows commerce and society to function and prosper.’ When society and commerce needed to communicate, the pony express, then the post office, then the telegraph, then the telephone, and then the internet were the infrastructure elements that evolved to support it. When commerce needed to ship its goods, the stagecoach, barges, railroads, the interstate highway system, and airplanes/ships were the infrastructure elements that evolved to support it. Our future will require more than this.
Some of the modern infrastructure needs for commerce to prosper that are much more pronounced today than they were around the time of the New Deal are childcare, elder care, education, research, and energy redefinition. With women almost at 50% of the work force (more than twice as much as in the 1950s), childcare is a widespread need and an inherent part of commerce’s employee needs. Ditto for elder care, as our population greys and their children, both men and women, are at work and not available to care for them. As our world becomes technologically more complicated, education is more important than ever. The US is 66th in the world for education spending (% of GDP), although it does have one of the best university systems in the world. An excellent education infrastructure is clearly in the best interest of the commerce of the future. But the future of education is more than colleges; trade and other practical education must be improved. All of these things might be viewed as too “soft” to be called infrastructure, but in today’s world US commerce will not be competitive without them.
Research is another area that naysayers argue is outside of infrastructure. They are wrong. Invention is no longer as simple as Edison trying out light filaments in his 200-person lab; it is extremely complex and expensive, often requiring widespread collaboration among numerous specialties. Only government support and collaboration with private commerce will keep the US on the world’s cutting edge. Which brings us to the research needed for the world’s final frontier for survival – energy redefinition. The climate change elements of Biden’s infrastructure proposal are a good start, although they don’t go far enough. From the beginning of US and global commerce, the government has played a key role in supporting research, and this element remains a pillar of US infrastructure. This highlight’s government’s role in society – as a facilitator.
Now back to the cost. Why not have businesses, i.e., commerce, pay for infrastructure? They directly benefit from it. Consider how poorly commerce would have prospered without the interstate highway system, ports, and airports. Consider how many companies would never have grown without government funded research and the education of their founders and implementors. What would be our quality of life without the offshoots of the US space program and without one of the best water supply and sewage systems in the world? And in the next commercial period, businesses won’t be able to hire enough employees if those people are too busy caring for their children and elders or are not educated well enough to build the new technological frontier, so they need a modern infrastructure plan and they should help pay for it.
The naysayers’ complaints are unfounded, insincere, and a distraction. More fair complaints are that the infrastructure proposal should be larger if we want to remain a world leader, and Biden has miscast its promotion as a “jobs initiative.” It is a shame that politics must promote such foolery. There is no question that the proposal will create jobs, but that is just a beneficial consequence. We should be proud to have the vision of a nation with modern infrastructure and a resultant prosperous commerce and society. Infrastructure for infrastructure’s sake.