Infrastructure...

THE POLITICAL ECONOMY OF INFRASTRUCTURE.

Via Matt, Rob Goodspeed has an interesting post on the political problems of infrastructure investment: Namely, that the payoff comes 50 years into the future, and so politicians worried about the next election systematically shortchange it. Goodspeed points to some clever potential fixes. One idea is to create an independent public commission to plan national transportation and make funding recommendations to Congress, which would be subject to a 2/3rd veto. Another option is to take infrastructure "off budget," or at least evaluate its impacts over a longer time horizon. A third idea, which Obama has expressed interest in, is to create a national infrastructure bank, modeled off the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation.

But it's not totally clear why infrastructure gets shortchanged. Some of infrastructure's benefits don't manifest for decades, but the construction does create jobs, and if a politician is able to brag about bringing a new highway or train systems, that's generally good enough. Infrastructure, after all, often takes the form of pork, and tends to pass easily. And certain types of infrastructure have few problems in the political system. Highways are well-funded. Transit systems less so. In other words, the problem doesn't seem to be in the amount we spend but the way we plan. That suggests that taking it off budget might be helpful, but more for smaller fixes without political constituencies (bridge repair) then big new projects aimed at changing transportation patterns. An independent commission might do more, but if you could get that commission and staff it with good people, you'd probably already have the political will to pass your infrastructure priorities through the normal process. Which brings us back to the original problem: Convincing existing political leaders, and the next president, to make smarter infrastructure development a priority. The problem with all these plans is that they can only really happen after you fulfill that base condition. But that base condition is what we currently don't have.