How to Fix Infrastructure

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Scott Sumner writes,

I think a better comparison for New York would be a high income, world-class city like Singapore or Hong Kong or Dubai. Those places are able to build very good infrastructure quickly and at low cost. They might use Bangladeshi migrant workers at $1/hour instead of American “prevailing wage” workers at $50/hour. Indeed even cities like Paris and Berlin build new subway lines at 1/7th the cost of the New York project. A small part of this cost gap may be due to physical differences between the various cities, but by no means all of it…

This demonstrates one of the many internal contradictions of American progressivism. (And by the way, American conservatives have just as many internal contradictions.) You can have your strong public employee unions, “prevailing wages” and restrictive work rules, or you can have nice infrastructure. New Yorkers have (perhaps unknowingly) made their choice. Now they must live with the consequences. Few progressives (with the notable exception of Matt Yglesias) understand these internal contradictions.

8 thoughts on “How to Fix Infrastructure”

  1. I doubt that Paris or Berlin pay their construction workers 7x less. I think a bigger problem is the US way of planning these projects, with multiple levels of review at multiple (often conflicting) levels of government. This leads to incredibly long time lines for planning, and probably lots of other waste. Also, in California at least, the environmental impacts review system seems to be designed to cost as much as possible.

  3. Aw, I don’t know. Second Avenue subway line (proposed: 1929, broke ground: 1972, completed: 2016???) and any one of a jillion skillion examples of never-ending construction boondoggles aside, I think our infrastructure is pretty good. NYC (as Arnold knows) bounced back pretty quickly after Sandy and (so far as I know) is still the only city with a subway system that runs 24/7 (as much as we tend to curse the MTA anyway). Plus, we got Uber (over the loud hemming and hawing of the TLC) with relatively little difficulty. I mean, don’t get me wrong, it’s costly. But at least what we get pretty much mostly works a lot of the time, except on some weekends and when you’re already late for work.

  4. Do we lack for forensic accountants? Or the skill sets we assume are part of the job of ordinary scholar or journalist? Follow the Money.

    This is the same thing that comes up in the Health Care debates. “Everything costs double in the US vs. other countries.”

    Ok, but why. Where does the money go? Is there a discipline of international comparative accounting, where I can see the ledgers for the same service side by side in a spreadsheet, and easily spot the source of all the extra expenditure?

    Infrastructure projects are all somewhat idiosyncratic, but they are not really incomparably unique special snowflakes.

    So, lay it out side by side and let’s see what they cost seven times more. Is it labor costs? Regulatory compliance? Environmental Studies? Delays?

    Almost none of the usual policy data-grinders seem interested in doing this in a systematic, easily digestible way. And perhaps that is because it would reveal those uncomfortable contradictions and force people to accept trade-offs and make hard choices, instead of being able to complain about everything with a semi-plausible ignorance.

    There was recently a story out of Austin of a similar cognitive disconnect between policy cause and effect:

    “I’m at the breaking point,” said Gretchin Gardner, an Austin artist who bought a 1930s bungalow in the Bouldin neighborhood just south of downtown in 1991 and has watched her property tax bill soar to $8500 this year.

    “It’s not because I don’t like paying taxes,” said Gardner, who attended both meetings [of “irate homeowners”]. “I have voted for every park, every library, all the school improvements, for light rail, for anything that will make this city better. But now I can’t afford to live here anymore.”

    • +1
      As to where the money goes I have heard that in healthcare and education it is absorbed by administration, I think that Arnold has written on this.

  5. Perhaps a better comparison is New Delhi or Bombay. Democracy has its costs. Authorities can lower the cost but at the expense of those who stand in the way. It is all about how those costs are divided and imposed. There is too cheap as well as too expensive.

  6. In Chicago we call it pinstripe partonage. Nothing gets built until all the players in political machine get their cut, which always rises. So corners have to be cut …

    Recently the Brown Line elevated was rebuilt and 1 year later patrons were falling thru the completely brand new platforms because the 1 year old wooden decking had rotted.

    Piketty in real life would be G > g, government spending exceeds the rate of growth. Past elections devaour the present.

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