There’s an article in the Pioneer Press (U.S. falling behind on upkeep) that caught my eye. The gist is pretty simple and one I’ve talked about before. On an international level, the US is not keeping up with the Joneses – or whatever the international equivalent of the Joneses would be. The highways and bridges aren’t being maintained. In an age when gas prices are rising like a helium balloon, public transportation needs to be maintained and expanded to reach the masses. (Then in my opinion we need an amazing marketing initiative to sell the idea of public transport.) Water and sewers are a financial and EPA (Environmental Protection Agency) nightmare. The Internet got a good start but has been stalled since the late 1990s.
What caught my eye was a mention of the Depression.
During the Great Depression, Congress came up with a solution to such problems: Tax gasoline and create a federal highway trust fund to provide money to maintain and expand highways.
This struck me because this weekend my mom took my kids to see the new American Girl Doll movie. Apparently it takes place during the Depression – so my oldest wanted to know how the Depression happened and how it ended. So, Grandpa talked about people borrowing more money than they couldn’t afford, losing jobs, not being able to pay off debt or buy new things, which resulted in more layoffs, which resulted in more borrowing of money that couldn’t be repaid, and so on. And then we talked about the WPA.
I know I’ve talked about it before – but it would be such a good idea to reinstate the WPA and get folks to build fiber. It would build something useful. It would provide jobs. It would relieve the incumbents from having to lay fiber, which seems to be something they aren’t interested in doing. And in fairness to the incumbent providers it requires a bigger and longer investment than most businesses are prepared to make these days. It seems as if maybe there ought to be a better solution.
