THE INFRASTRUTURE BILL: The Myopic Focus on the Dollar Amount and Only the Dollar Amount
By
David Gottfried
The political discourse is riveted to debates over how much we should spend on infrastructure. Should we spend 3.5 trillion, or should we spend substantially less, or should we spend more.
If you are a liberal, all spending is apparently good, and if you are a conservative, all spending is downright evil. Therefore, there is no need to spend any time evaluating the specific programs being advanced. Of course, to some extent, the brain dead media does offer some definition to the infrastructure bill. They have told us that there is traditional infrastructure and there is social infrastructure. Wow! That’s really a lot of specificity.
They include in traditional infrastructure roads and bridges and mass transit, and the amount of money the bill allots for roads and bridges is 9 times as much as the amount of money to be spent on Mass transit. That’s really brilliant. We all know that we don’t have to worry about pollution because we are all positively certain that all cars will be exhaust-free in four years, tens of thousands of auto deaths a year are hunky dory and, besides, mass transit is primarily in blue states which we Democrats already have locked up.
But before we get down into the nitty gritty (Actually, I might pass on it because I don’t have the time), I want to address some larger issues that no one seems to think about:
SPENDING A LOT OF MONEY DOES NOT NECESSARILY DO A DAMN BIT OF GOOD – REMEMBER THE MAGINOT LINE
The French, and most military observers in the world, thought that France was exceedingly well prepared for World War Two. It had a very large army, and it had spent a ton of money constructing a system of defenses that were deemed impregnable to German attack.
As most of you know, World War One in western Europe was dominated by trench warfare. The allies were on one side, the Germans were on the other side, and the antagonists fired on each other for more than four years. Through much of the war, the lines were completely static. Each side stayed in its own blood soaked, rat and lice infested trench for a seemingly interminable amount of time.
Of course, there was something worse than trench warfare: An enemy advance which would shatter your lines and slaughter your forces as fire rained down from the opposing side. Therefore, French military leaders, and uninspired military strategists the world over, focused their efforts on bolstering their front lines.
The French built the mighty Maginot Line. It was a huge structure, which extended from the bowels of the earth where soldiers were destined to be buried (if they are not blasted to bits) to well above ground from which deadly projectiles rained death. It traversed the entire Eastern frontier of France from its Southernmost point until the Ardennes forest, where French defenses were minimal because the geniuses of the French High Command thought the Germans could never traverse the Ardennes forests. To the north of the Ardennes forest were French, British, Dutch and Belgian armies which, in the aggregate, amounted to a very sizable force.
The Maginot line was the Goliath of armaments. It was huge like Goliath. It was massive like Goliath. But like Goliath it was also something that could be brought down by the simplest means. The future King David felled Goliath with a simple sling shot. The Germans defeated the Maginot line by simply going around it. Since the Maginot line did seem impenetrable, the Germans simply went through the ill-defended Ardennes forest. As soon as the Germans were west of the Maginot line, the Maginot line was worthless because it consisted of concrete fortifications facing East, toward Germany. As the Germans went further and further West, and South, gobbling-up Gaul, the guns of the Maginot line were impotently aimed to the East.
To say that one should spend one’s money wisely is a truism. Anybody knows that. Except of course the dingbats in the Press and assorted prima donna politicians.
SPENDING MONEY ON THE POOR TO MAKE THE RICH SUPER RICH
I have been a leftist for most of my life, and I am always attracted to anything that will soak the rich and feed the poor. However, experience has taught me to scrutinize programs with care and to suspect the worst. Congress is in large part a rich persons’ club, and if a Congressman is not an attorney, he has at his beck and call stables of counsel, and when a bunch of affluent attorneys are up to something, don’t be a naïve fool.
Let’s take a look at how programs to help poor people often help rich people:
HOW SCARLETT OHARA’S GRAND KIDS GOT A WHOLE LOT OF MONEY FROM WASHINGTON:
Consider the Agriculture Adjustment Act, one of the prime pieces of New Deal Legislation enacted to help the poor. It aimed to support the price of food stuffs by paying farmers not to plant crops. More often than not, these payments went to large farmers who were better connected. In the South, this had grievous consequences. The owners of massive plantations, people who may have been the sons and daughters of slave masters, got hefty checks for keeping their land fallow. They pocketed the money and evicted the sharecroppers, white and black, who worked the land. More than one million, but I am fairly sure less than two million, tenant farmers became homeless thanks to this New Deal program enacted to help poor people.
I could give you many more examples, but I think you get the picture. If you don’t understand what I am saying, you may be dumb enough to get a job in Washington.