Rebuilding Our Infrastructure
Date Posted: November 16, 2016
Posted In: News,
From The New York Times: In a vitriolic campaign season, one of the few things that the candidates could agree on was their desire to see more spending on the highways, rail lines, ports and dams that make up our national infrastructure. Relatively early in the campaign season, Donald J. Trump met Hillary Clinton’s announcement of a huge infrastructure package, worth $275 billion, by announcing one that would be more than twice as big.
On election night, it was this promise, more than any other issue, that he returned to. “We are going to fix our inner cities and rebuild our highways, bridges, tunnels, airports, schools, hospitals,” he said in his acceptance speech on Tuesday night.
Infrastructure is an appealing cause because it provides a straightforward way for the government to inject money into the economy and build the foundation for longer term economic growth. But some economists say returns from infrastructure spending are likely to be much less pronounced than they were in the past, in part because the highest yielding infrastructure is already in place. Looking at infrastructure data from different sources provides conflicting pictures of what needs to be done, but it is a topic worth examining from as many perspectives as possible.