David Brancaccio, NOW on PBS
One of the finest pieces of satire ever committed to film is “Idiocracy,” an underrated 2006 feature from Mike Judge that projects what society will look like after 500 more years of dumbing down. By then, according to the comedy, hardly anyone reads, most are barely intelligible, and the food supply is about to fail because crops have been irrigated with Gatorade (actually “Brawndo“) because policymakers believed advertisements that said the energy beverage was good for you. What is especially resonant is the state of the infrastructure as depicted in the film. If you watch the background carefully, you can see the crumbling hulks of what were once highway overpasses or bridges left to rot in a society incapable of planning ahead.
Idiocracy’s vision of the future
It is clear that could be the future of America’s infrastructure if current trends of neglect are allowed to continue unabated. And as the collapse of the 35W Bridge in Minneapolis two summers ago made shockingly clear, we won’t have to wait 500 years for things to fall apart. While no politician is in favor of potholes, dangerous bridges, or traffic jams, fixing what needs to be fixed will cost a colossal amount of money in a time when the economic collapse is demanding great rivers of public money for front-and-center needs of all kinds.
However, the economic crisis and the pressing need to fix the infrastructure may have crashed together in a useful way. Economist and op-ed columnist Paul Krugman made the case for our cameras just hours after he got off the plane from Stockholm where he had just picked up his Nobel Prize for Economics. I conducted this interview for the Blueprint America project, a year-long PBS initiative on infrastructure. The interview will conclude a special called “The Big Fix,” airing on December 30th at 9:00 pm on Thirteen – and later, will be watchable online.
Krugman has long pondered the last big economic crisis similar in magnitude to the one we face now. He has just freshened up his 1999 book, “The Return of Depression Economics,” and he says the principles of the 1930s apply now: Roosevelt spent government money mightily on infrastructure and so must Obama. He must spend a lot, the spending needs to start right away, and, according to Krugman, the spending has to be sustained. Roosevelt got in trouble, the economist argues, when he slowed spending, prompting a recession in 1937.
Krugman teaches at Princeton and he included on his personal list of infrastructure spending perhaps a new rail tunnel under the Hudson River to New York. Alternative energy, the next generation internet, computerizing health care, building new classrooms all count toward the goal of keeping the U.S. out of depression. And building a better country, I asked? Yes, both goals in tandem, Krugman said.
This is, of course, money the U.S. Treasury does not have, especially given last fall’s rescue/bailout for banks. However, the interest rates the government has to pay to borrow the money is extremely low these days, which will help. Still, a few years hence, when the U.S. is out of recession, there is no getting around the big bill that will have to be paid.
As Chinua Achebe wrote, “Things fall apart.” That has happened to our economy and our infrastructure, but that confluence of timing could be an historic opportunity.
(3 votes)
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12/30/2008 :: 11:23:24 PM
Mike Sorrentino Says:
Getting America back to work is a GREAT idea, but I see one major problem that didn’t exist in the Great Depression.
Joe Everyman is hired by the Fix-It-Up-Now [FIUN] company, at a $1, 000 a week plus overtime. Joe can expect about $1,400 a week gross. The Feds get their cut, income tax, SS tax, Medicare. Next comes the State, Income tax, Workers Comp, Sales tax and Joe buys a home, Real-estate tax and so on. Joe’s net is down to say $900 a week, not bad.
FIUN is building a much needed Light Rail system, and has many employees on many levels, Engineers down to Sweep-ups; everyone is working, really, really great.
Now FIUN needs supplies, Steel for Rails, Rebar, Buildings, Stations, Copper for wire Concrete, Screws, Nuts, Bolts. Construction equipment, earth movers, trucks, cars staff cars, and you get the picture.
Where do we get the steel from? Where’s the Steel Mills? Copper for wire? And how do we power it all?
Joe has $900 a week burning a hole in his pocket; he goes and buys a 50 inch flat screen TV, Surround Sound system, a PC with games for the kids.
Now go follow the money trail. Joe plunks down $800 for the 50 ‘ inch flat screen TV, the Salesman gets a $50 commission on the sale, the store profits $150 on the sale. The Warehouse-jobber profits $75; the trucking company is prayed for their services, moving the TV and so do all the workers along the way.
Keep following the money.
How did the TV arrive at the Warehouse-jobber? A trucker delivered it, from where?
A US factory, or was it off-loaded from a Container ship? Where did the Container ship come from? China, Korea, Japan. The point of all this is, we don’t make TV’s here any more and ultimately the stimulus money will find its way out of our economony to benefit another countries. The same holds true for the supplies FIUN uses, Train controls from Germany, Light Rail Cars from Japan, etc. There’s too much money leaking out of the country for this thing to work.