The US has forgotten how to do infrastructure - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2017-05-31/the-u-s-has-forgotten-how-to-do-infrastructure <comment><USER2> I don't know the answers, but as someone who works in the industry (on the design side). I think a big unmentioned factor is probably liability and the prospect of litigation.

If you look at old blueprints for projects in the past, they are a LOT less detailed. They had to be, because it was physically more difficult to produce them since they had to be drawn by hand. A lot was left to the contractor to figure out in the field.

Now, drawings are more detailed and contractors are incredibly reluctant to make even the smallest decisions on their own. They don't want to assume the liability and risk getting sued if they do something wrong, so they push that off on the engineers and architects.

This means every time there's a question, it has to be submitted through a formal process, tracked, answered, documented. And if the change has any cost impacts, the contractor tacks on a hefty premium because they know they can get away with it (and they probably underbid in the first place to win the job). Delays pile up, every clarification becomes an expensive change order, construction workers twiddle their thumbs while designers get around to addressing questions and this all costs money and time.

<comment><USER3> Anecdotally, having moved to Western Europe, I get the sense that this is the major factor as well.

If I walk down the street and there is a group of workers excavating a road, there's a lot more of a relaxed attitude about fencing, walking underneath construction equipment, etc.

After all - use your common sense - don't fall into the hole. If you do, isn't it kind of your own fault? Nobody's going to sue anybody.

Additionally, it's not a big deal to close or severely impact a road due to construction - just shift around the fantastic public transit infrastructure, and everyone carries along. A bus only needs one lane in both directions. Another thing that would never fly in North America.

Both of these problems are deeply cultural. Lawsuits have become a form of welfare. Sure, you might not have government healthcare if you get hurt or sick, but maybe you can sue somebody and get paid for your suffering?

And America's love affair with the automobile is a well-known abusive relationship that America will never have the courage to leave.

<comment><USER4> > And America's love affair with the automobile is a well-known abusive > relationship that America will never have the courage to leave.

It's pretty much impossible to leave this relationship unless you live in one of the larger US cities. If you live in a suburb, rural area, or city that's not in the top 10-15 in terms of size there's literally no other option that exists or that could easily exist.

<comment><USER5> That's a self-inflicted problem though. Nobody put a gun to America's head and forced us to make our cities sprawl out. We collectively decided to do it that way because we thought it was better.

And for a few things it IS better. But there are a whole lotta costs, too, with the top 3 being being actual financial cost, grinding on the faces of the poor, and making us fat.

<comment><USER6> It was done for a very rational reason: making country more immune to a nuclear attack, especially the retaliation to its own nuclear attack (i.e. a nuclear attack that is coming in convenient time of day and week because you chose the time). It works perfectly to that purpose: it is whole lot better to keep all relevant population in separate houses with basements, with little combustible material around, than in multimillion cities with no way out of them.

If U.S. launched its missiles while all these people just came home from jobs say at 11pm ET/8pm PT, and people in the Soviet Union were on the way or at their factory jobs during Moscow morning on Siberia mid-day, it would be a slaughter for the Soviet Union and an easy win for the U.S.

<comment><USER3> Have a source for any of that?

Sounds like a completely made-up justification after the fact.

Surely someone would have raised the point that the soviet union could just launch it's missiles in the middle of the work day.

Also, Moscow is tremendously sprawled out.

<comment><USER7> Federal Highways in the US are designed to increase national security. The best example is certain bridges are in certain places so that their destruction would cut off the easy path for mobilized enemy armor. They're designed to be easily blown up on purpose.

<comment><USER8> You got any credible sources on that? It sounds like one of those urban legends that people like to repeat. The Eisenhower interstate system was built in a post-nuclear world, and in a post-nuclear world it's hard to imagine there ever being a mainland invasion of the United States. The bombs would be flying before that, and there wouldn't be anything left worth invading (on any side in the conflict). Being able to utterly destroy the other nation and its military forces within minutes by launching thousands of ICBMs is a much more credible plan of war than blowing up some random bridges on your own turf, and indeed that is the logical course of action that we did go down.

<comment><USER9> I don't know about the bridges specifically, but that the interstate system had an explicit national security purpose is not just well-documented, it's literally right there in the name of the law that created it: National Interstate and Defense Highways Act.

<comment><USER8> My issue with the bridge thing is that it's easy enough to blow up bridges, especially as you're retreating from the territory they're in, regardless of their location or construction. It could cost billions of extra construction dollars to unnecessarily site a bridge in anything but its obvious ideal location (e.g. the shortest possible span).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10>
      That suggests that U.S. costs are high due to general
      inefficiency [...] Americans have simply ponied up more
      and more cash over the years while ignoring the fact that
      they were getting less and less for their money.

There's a general effect in political systems, that if a law takes $20 from 1,000,000 people and gives $100,000 to 200 people, the people who lose money won't have enough incentive to put up a big fight; but the people who receive money will have more than enough motivation.

For example, if a big irrigation project will force taxpayers to subsidise corporate farms, the corporations have a big incentive to spend on ads and campaign contributions. Or if you have to give $60 to a private company for tax filing software, they have a big incentive to lobby and make campaign contributions to keep the tax system complicated.

I'm sure construction projects are subject to the same pro-waste incentives.

I'm not sure what the solution to this is - campaign finance reform, perhaps?

<comment><USER11> >campaign finance reform, perhaps?

Abso-fucking-lutely. I think in order to run at any levels of office, you should be using public money. For simplification, let's say if one wants to run for president, they can only use whatever is in the FEC public coffers. In return, we levy a federal FEC tax to boost it way higher than its current rates. We replicate a similar tax at state and local levels. Completely remove private donations and PACs and all that shit from the lawbooks. A fuckload of people want to run for president? Well, you better get creative with your tiny slice of the pie. Show us how fiscally responsible you really are.

People would scream and holler about it not being American, but it's one of the only ways, I think, to really take a large stab at our chronic corruption.

<comment><USER12> >For simplification, let's say if one wants to run for president, they can only use whatever is in the FEC public coffers.

What in particular would they not be allowed to use private money to do?

Would individuals that aren't running be allowed to use private money to do those things?

<comment><USER13> Countries that have limits on pre-election advertising spending generally include any and all public advertising expenses in that - TV, newspapers, online media, billboards, public space, physical mail campaigns, sponsorship of events/teams/whatever, etc. Pre-election ads by other people is limited - small amounts per person are exempted, but you can't simply buy a $10k radio ad praising whatever candidate you like, nor can a radio station do it on their own.

Also, in the pre-election time mass media have to offer equal conditions for all parties - if you own a TV station and run ads for one party for $1/minute, then you have to offer the same ad slots for the same price to all other parties as well.

I mean, it's not simple and it _does_ require some limitations of what the people and media can do - which might conflict with USA 1st amendment, but in general the problem is somewhat solvable, it's somehow done elsewhere and so you can look at worldwide experience to pick out the bits that work best.

<comment><USER12> >but you can't simply buy a $10k radio ad praising whatever candidate you like

Can I buy a $10k radio ad supporting some particular issue that the candidate also supports?

Can I buy a radio station and hire talk radio hosts that argue in favor of the candidate or issues the candidate supports?

>but in general the problem is somewhat solvable

I think that depends on what you count as "solvable". The systems which address the problem probably work better for some people and less well for others. Which people do you have reason to believe are beneficiaries of these systems, and what reason do you have to believe that?

<comment><USER13> On one hand, the beneficiaries are the smaller parties, since it allows somewhat effective participation in elections without requiring that much money - they get some free airtime (gov't funds a specific amount of airtime in largest TV & radio stations for election coverage, allocated equally for parties; I'm not sure whether _all_ applicants or all those who got some minimum number of votes in previous elections), and if you have an active volunteer force, you can get your message out without being overwhelmed by a massive campaign of the established parties. This also makes it practical for new parties to get started and get some seats whenever some voter group or key issue gets ignored by the parties in power.

On the other hand, it has some advantages for the established politicians as well, after all _they_ set the rules for this system - in essence it avoids an arms race. Lifting the limits would give them some advantage over the smaller parties and upstarts, but nothing over their real competition, but that would mean that all the major players would suddenly need to raise many times more money, making everyone more dependent on donors.

Who are the losers in this case? Probably the _very_ wealthiest individuals (not "the 1%" but the top 10-100 richest people), since it limits their influence. At any one point of time one or another party (not necessarily the largest one) may have an advantage in financial support and would be happy to lift or raise limits so that they could buy more votes, but if something like that happens, then it motivates everyone else to not let that happen.

Regarding your questions - it depends, that's more a question for the lawyers. IMHO ads supporting some issue would be fine but talk hosts arguing in favor of some (any) candidate would be prohibited in pre-election campaign time window - e.g. all mass media interviews with candidates during that time would be only in the scheduled slots or as advertising. Sure, if you control important media or people then the limits can and do get bent quite a bit beyond their intent, but it still sets a limit. I mean, if the stated limit is 10 then everybody might push it to 11 by various means, but you can't really do a meaningful _large scale_ money-influence campaign without it being obviously illegal.

<comment><USER12> >Who are the losers in this case? Probably the very wealthiest individuals (not "the 1%" but the top 10-100 richest people), since it limits their influence.

I would guess the opposite is probably true. The top 10-100 likely have very strong influence over the media, either due to just owning media outlets or due to business relationships (e.g. buying advertisements not related to politics). If people without those relationships can't buy advertisements, then the people who influence media in other ways benefit.

>IMHO ads supporting some issue would be fine

So it would be fine for someone to spend a few million on anti-immigrant ads a few days before an election where immigration is a key point of disagreement between the two front-runners?

>Sure, if you control important media or people then the limits can and do get bent quite a bit beyond their intent, but it still sets a limit.

Why exactly is the existence of a limit relevant? People will receive information about the candidates, and many will decide how to vote based on that information. I don't see how it matters whether the information comes from paid advertising or from control over the media. Some individuals will decide what information the masses will see. Those people have enormous influence over the election. I don't see how it matters if they got that influence by paying for it directly or indirectly.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Am also a design engineer, I specialize in water and wastewater works. My clients are all municipalities, with tight budget and politics are a factor. Engineering productivity has climbed thanks to computers, but construction productivity continues to decline. In my experience on small jobs this has a lot to do with safety and regulations. It takes a team of 2-3 to enter confined spaces (manholes) for momentary inspections or maintenance, it takes extra workers to set up traffic zones to ensure travellers are less of a danger to the workers. Time is taken to ensure archeological, agricultural, and culturally sensitive areas are not disturbed. Minority and women owned businesses are given contractual preference, whether they are most qualified or not. It takes a special (read: expensive) team several weeks to document trivial wetland areas (most people call them roadside ditches), and another person weeks of labor to explain how impacts will be minimized. The government sets standard labor rates for construction labor.

But these are things we as a society have deemed important. Its not acceptable for lives to be lost. It's not acceptable for construction workers to accept low wages. It's not acceptable to recklessly degrade our environmental resources, and it's important to have diversity in this industry.

I don't know if it's true in other countries, but it seems the USA vascilates between priorities depending on the public administration. I am young so my experience is short. Bush saw a real estate bubble, Obama saw an insurance bubble, Trump et al aim for a construction boom. I would add that in New York my home state, a Democrat state, there is a large infrastructure program starting, so it's not just Republicans.

<comment><USER9> And yet, they can do this in Europe, where all these things are also considered important (so far as I know; but I've yet to see evidence to the contrary).

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=btOE0rcKDC0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=btOE0rcKDC0)

<comment><USER15> Well, technically that tunnel launch is nothing extraordinary, surely well done, but nothing more, have you seen/read the linked to article (Dutch)? [http://www.gelderlander.nl/ede/deze-tunnel-onder- de-a12-is-e...](http://www.gelderlander.nl/ede/deze-tunnel-onder-de-a12-is- een-jaar-oud-en-dichtgespijkerd~ae9c1f4f/)

Google Translate: >This tunnel under the A12 is one year old, and closely sealed EDE - Just a year and a day, it's already waiting under the A12 at Ede: a large tunnel, intended for the Park Avenue, the route that must open in Ede East from the A12 to the N224. As it turns out, it will take another year for road construction.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I thought about this when I visited the Hoover Dam.

The audacity of the thing and sheer impossibility of doing anything remotely like it in today's America makes it seem like a relic from an ancient civilization.

It felt like visiting the pyramids in Egypt.

<comment><USER17> Hypothesis: nicotine is a nootropic [0] good for say, 6 IQ points on average (Danish study I saw referenced, not linking unless I can find the original paper). The Hoover Dam and many other great infrastructure projects were created in the earlier 20th century when smoking was pervasive. Perhaps we were somewhat smarter in aggregate back then and that's why we can't engineer infrastructure at the same level anymore.

0 - [https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/will-a- nicotine-p...](https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/will-a-nicotine- patch-make-you-smarter-excerpt/)

<comment><USER18> There aren't 6 point differences between France, China, Japan, and the USA. It's more like 2 points. And if 2, or 6 points could double construction costs, then in the poorest countries like Africa everything would have to cost something like 100x more, which is definitely not the case.

<comment><USER19> This is only true for certain scales relating IQ to construction costs. The average IQ in Africa is, what, ~15 points lower than America? Suppose the first 2 points increase construction costs by a factor of 1.5, and each subsequent 2-point reduction by a smaller factor, until you reach some limit (IQ average too low to be realistic, NGO aid, something like that).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> From my perspective infrastructure is politically driven in the US. Projects are debated for decades, over this time changes are made to placate some groups and buy the support from other groups, and create jobs for some politician, until it baloons into something that is many billions of dollars. Then it is built as a one off mega project. At this point it should be killed but this is seen as the only way to get stuff done.

Things like CAHSR instead of agreeing on a goal and deciding we should have a CA-wide rail system, so then establish a division of Caltrans which we fund to incrementally build/acquire/run a network through ROW acquisition, running DMUs on the routes in the mean time, making it compatible with existing systems, etc. instead becomes one giant $60b acquisition that is master planned for a multi decade time frame to be built almost entirely as a stand alone system the benefits of which can't really be enjoyed until decades in the future.

<comment><USER21> I think the one off nature of projects is the problem. There is no coherent long term plan.

<comment><USER22> According to Peter Thiel (in CS183), this lack of long term plan is a symptom of people believing that the future is indeterminate[1].

1\. [http://blakemasters.com/post/23435743973/peter-thiels- cs183-...](http://blakemasters.com/post/23435743973/peter-thiels- cs183-startup-class-13-notes) (Section I. The End of Big Projects)

<comment><USER23> Admittedly, that belief was driven by the repercussions of failed bets on the future. Just look at pension contributions and retirement returns from the 60s to the 80s.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I'm pretty sure we're so far invested in being crappy at government that we can't feasibly turn back without inflicting a lot of pain.

Admittedly anecdotal, but after having lived near two major DOE national laboratories (where >40% of my neighbors worked at the lab), I wouldn't be surprised if 60-80% of the workers at these labs could be eliminated under a combination of audit-based reform, regulatory reform, and management changes. Without any change in output or results. I've listened to descriptions of what people do at these labs, and it blows me away how low productivity they are compared to the private sector. I've known people who work entire workweeks that could be consolidated into 3-5 hours of work, and _they 're willing to admit it_. In fact, those that would try to change from within have told me they would feel vulnerable to retaliation if they went through with it.

And that's before we get into the shitshow that is federal contract work. We've turned federal contract work into a goldmine for whoever has enough lawyers to win a bid. And we don't even know how many people are employed doing that contract work [0]!

At this point, meaningful reform means taking 10's of millions of people and forcing productivity on them to the point where most of them are unnecessary. We could probably double the unemployment rate with the right reforms. That's why it won't happen.

[0] [http://www.govexec.com/contracting/2015/03/even-cbo- stumped-...](http://www.govexec.com/contracting/2015/03/even-cbo-stumped-size- contractor-workforce/107436/)

<comment><USER25> This is a symptom of David Graeber's phrase of "bullshit jobs". Capitalism and the government work together to create unnecessary work (often through regulation and oversight and middle management stuffing) to maintain "safe" employment levels to keep the economic system working. If we were only hiring people to do productive things, and considering we saw a 75% productivity increase between 1975 and 2005 _with_ all the bullshit jobs, while domain- specific productivity figures hit the 300% or higher ranges, you could maintain the same GDP at 40%+ unemployment. The only problem being the country would collapse with that much unemployment, so the private and public sectors respond by fabricating things to do that don't actually create goods or services.

<comment><USER26> Isn't this simply "fiscal stimulus?"

I mean, the federal government is _supposed to_ create jobs by spending money. Doesn't matter what they spend the money _on._

The only acceptable way to measure economic output is _in terms of the dollar value of all the goods and services bought and sold._ It could consist of marijuana farming, muscle car paint jobs, bass fishing lures, watery beer, custom gun barrels, cow-brain sandwiches and East European strippers. Doesn't matter. We can't go around imposing our value-based notions of "bullshit jobs" on top of that measurable dollar amount.

That wouldn't be _economics._

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> This reflects in health care as well. American health care costs about twice as much as it does in every other first-world nation. Those systems run the gamut from fully socialist to mostly privatized, but they all share a common feature - they provide universal coverage at half the cost of the American system. That says there's something uniquely broken in our model.

Infrastructure? Same thing. There's something distinctly American in how slow and expensive it is. These are systemic issues, not some single-cause thing that [liberals|conservatives] can finger-point to a partisan villain.

<comment><USER28> > mostly privatized

Where's that?

<comment><USER29> Switzerland might be a good example ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Healthcare_in_Switzerland](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Healthcare_in_Switzerland)):

 _Healthcare in Switzerland is universal and is regulated by the Swiss Federal Law on Health Insurance. There are no free state-provided health services, but private health insurance is compulsory for all persons residing in Switzerland (within three months of taking up residence or being born in the country)._

<comment><USER30> It's privatized, but not private like you would think of in the US. For example, insurers aren't allowed to profit off of the basic insurance everyone is required to get, they can only profit off of expanded coverage. They also have Medicare-style price controls which is obvious, but not private in the sense we use in the US.

<comment><USER9> So basically the big reason why it succeeds where ACA does not is because it regulates the prices?

<comment><USER30> That along with a real mandate and the fact that Switzerland is a tiny place (similar in population as Virginia, though 1/3 the physical size).

<comment><USER27> I've seen the geography argument brought up for a "Why no national insurance companies?" Apparently, network stuff is so localized that it's very hard to set up a national-level insurance company. Although I suspect state-by-state laws play into it as well.

At any rate, the sheer geographic size, plus the large population, plus the legalistic bizarreness of our federal/state divide, leads to a chaotic system, and we can't easily just legislate that away.

<comment><USER9> But why would a national insurance company be a prerequisite for quality healthcare in at least some states?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> I have been wondering lately if we have become so dependent on certain sectors of the US economy (housing, infrastructure, healthcare, education) that risk aversion is suffocating innovation.

No one wants to send their kid to an unproven, experimental university. No city wants to beta test a new style of road building. No patient wants to be the first to try a new treatment. We are so dependent on these things that the cost of failure is astronomical. Because no one is willing to try new methods of doing things, costs never go down. There are marginal improvements, for sure, but no disruptive changes.

It feels like a weird manifestation of NIMBYism. We all want innovation, but we want to test it on someone else first.

<comment><USER32> Your question reminded me of the resistance of PEX adoption in California, even though it has been widely accepted in Canada.

[http://www.remodeling.hw.net/products/house- systems/californ...](http://www.remodeling.hw.net/products/house- systems/californiais-pex-battle-continues)

I was surprised the article didn't address regulation much nor the fear of litigation (when I googled for canada pex legal, I found class action suits...)

<comment><USER33> The obvious next question being, _are_ PEX pipes safe? Perhaps California is just ahead of the curve banning it.

<comment><USER34> As far as we can tell. Pex is just polyethylene or (C2h4)n - there is nothing about that chemical formula to be particularly concerned about. It doesn't leach anything - when pure water is desired it the most common pipe to specify as it is cheap and works well (glass is better but that is mostly because glass does not allow air to through to dissolve in your water - and obviously more expensive)

The alternative is copper and cPVC. cPVP is just another plastic. Copper leaches copper into your water (though not harmful for most purposes), and is attacked by common water ph to corrode and ultimately break requiring replacement (though this takes about a lifetime). Copper is more expensive - 10 feet of copper pipe will cost as much as 100 feet of pex, and you have to join the copper every 10 feet: more expensive labor.

The claimed worry is impurities from manufacturing exposes workers to them when the pipes are first turned on. Note that there is no particular reason to believe those objections do not apply to approved pipes. My opinion is they don't like the idea of pex because it is less labor which means less money for them.

I personally use pex for all my plumbing in my house. It is cheap, quick and easy.

<comment> mark-r I've noticed that Pex has taken over new construction in my area. I built my house 17 years ago and copper water pipes were still standard. I just assumed cost was the big driver since copper has gone up about 200% in that time.

You say that copper will eventually corrode, but how does that compare to the lifetime of Pex?

<comment><USER34> Good question... Regular polyethylene is rated for 50 years in ground (I was researching geothermo at one point), and experts say that is mostly because nobody wants to bother with caring about things that will happen after they are dead. Generally it is believed we should get 200 years out of it, perhaps more.

PEX has essentially zero resistance to UV, in sun exposure salutations you get a few weeks of lifetime. Most buildings don't expose plumbing to sunlight though. There are a few (very few) chemicals that attack PEXs, but all the ones I know of are nasty enough that I'd wear full protection if I ever have to work with them - not something I expect drinking water will ever contains. Pex is resistant to any PH I'd want to drink.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> Related to what we might label "modern" infrastructure, I just got back from a trip visiting the outskirts of Illinois.

The towns there are small, but full of people hungry for opportunities and good work.

Yet everywhere you go there is no work to be done. Businesses—even big box stores like Walmart or Target—are closed down. Homes lay vacant despite their reasonably cheap (at least for someone living in Silicon Valley) $20,000 price tag. Even churches in the area have to close their doors but leave their steeples standing, unable to draw in an audience or—and most importantly—any money to maintain things.

This isn't Detroit I'm talking about, it's a fairly typical suburb of a larger metropolitan area in the midwest.

The answer for many of these people has largely and loudly been: "Bring back jobs from overseas! Stop outsourcing work to China!"

But of course that's not a valid answer, since the problem is that the jobs these towns once knew now belong to machines which can work tens of times harder and longer at a fraction of the cost of their former human counterparts. Yes, some of the work has gone overseas, but much of it has just become "modernized" by technology.

And here's the thing: the infrastructure for things as simple as Internet access in these parts of the US just isn't there.

So nobody goes to school to learn programming or design or how to be a modern entrepreneur because they (the individuals and schools) just don't have any connection to those parts of the landscape. And when they do, their model is wildly out of date.

One of the Universities I visited and, later, a high school had each _just_ opened a computer lab for students in which the goal wasn't to help students learn programming, or design, or anything like that, but merely how to type.

This of course added on top of the decrepit roads, buildings, etc. The state is wildly out of money because it can't put people to work, and the people can't work because the infrastructure just isn't there. It's depressing to see, really. I want to know how we can improve this, and what someone living on the other side of the country might do to help.

<comment><USER5> I think what's really interesting is that the US seems to have so many of these economically broken places, and yet GDP per capita in the US is the highest of any large country (and higher than all but a handful of small countries). I'm not saying you're wrong, I just think it's interesting that we can have these obvious large problems and still be economically successful in spite of that.

<comment><USER36> That's just a description of huge inequality, though. The "economic success" is largely concentrated in a tiny pool of the extremely rich.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> The Slate Star Codex essays on "cost disease" are as usual a must read:

[http://slatestarcodex.com/2017/02/09/considerations-on- cost-...](http://slatestarcodex.com/2017/02/09/considerations-on-cost- disease/)

[http://slatestarcodex.com/2017/02/17/highlights-from-the- com...](http://slatestarcodex.com/2017/02/17/highlights-from-the-comments-on- cost-disease/)

</comment><comment><USER38> Vague talk of inefficiency in construction isn't really very informative. Has anyone ever done a study where they take two very similar projects — building a medium sized office building, for example — in the US and China, and following them both from beginning to end, auditing exactly how much money and time is spent on each stage? It seems like this would provide a useful basis for comparison.

<comment><USER39> Wouldn't they vary wildly due to OSHA and other requirements like permits and bribes?

<comment><USER40> Probably.

That is something that would be good to understand with precision, hence the study.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> I don't know if "forgotten" as used in the title is the correct word so much as just "out of practice." Look at this list of infrastructure projects in China in the last decade or so:

[http://www.businessinsider.com/giant-chinese- infrastructure-...](http://www.businessinsider.com/giant-chinese- infrastructure-projects-that-are-reshaping-the-world-2016-6/)

It's hard not to be impressed by that list. And China is undertaking these scale projects abroad as well from Latin America to Africa.

It's should be no surprise that you get really good at something the more you do it. What was the last project that the US Federal Government undertook on a similar scale as one of these? "The Big Dig[1]"? Notable for being the most expensive highway project in US history and yet served only Boston?

The US seems to spend interminable months squabbling over whether or not its un-American to use imported steel to replace parts of its crumbling infrastructure(see Bay Bridge, Tapan Zee projects etc.) while the Chinese seem to spend that time actually executing the project.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Dig](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Dig)

<comment><USER42> It's almost like a democracy slows development, if you compare China to India it looks like that.

<comment><USER41> Another possibility is that development slows when you're spending Trillion dollars[1] on endless wars abroad instead of investing in infrastructure at home:

[1] [http://watson.brown.edu/costsofwar/costs/economic](http://watson.brown.edu/costsofwar/costs/economic)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> > Yet France's trains cost much less.

Decades of expertise might be a reason here, France has the longest amount of (high speed rail miles / country area), and the non high-speed network is also huge. It's also possible that the monopoly of having only one, state-owned, railroad company (SNCF) let that company negotiate/choose better prices much more aggressively than if there was many companies. I don't think it was stupid at the time to have such a state-owned monopoly for building this key infrastructure.

Also I'd think that with that big of a network, some things start to become less costly because of economies of scale. Last April SNCF bought _30_ trains to Alstom for 250m€, with the current US infrastructure I doubt the US needs that many trains. If one day like France they have 450 high speed trains, maybe it'll cost them less to have more built.

Japan and France are dense countries, the area of France is roughly equal to the area of Texas, it's hard to imagine 450 high speed trains there, where they're struggling to even get one high speed rail line between Houston and Dallas.

<comment><USER44> Funny thing is that the population of Texas is a little less than half that of France's (27 mil vs 66 mil), so the density differential isn't _that_ large, yet your point about the implausibility of 450 trains in Texas stands.

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> It costs extra because CORRUPTION. They're skimming off the top at every level, and that's why they can't let anyone investigate.

<comment><USER46> Why is this corruption particularly endemic in the US and not in other major western countries?

<comment><USER20> From my experience this kind of crony corruption is becoming more endemic in places like New Zealand and Australia. I can't speak for Europe.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> I recently ran into the MDOT project manager for a rebuild/expansion of a section of I-75. With some googling I found that she was working on the project since 2001 - construction started in 2016 and is not scheduled to be completed until 2030.

So she will be working on the project for 30 years; her entire career... something is pretty broken about the government structures around these projects.

<comment><USER48> I know that this can happen because my wife started her federal government career in one agency working with someone who retired from the agency shortly after she started. This person had spent their entire career at DOT managing projects along the interstate between Houston and Galveston. The expansion/maintenance over that time period guaranteed that nothing was ever truly completed. Crews/contractors simply shifted down the highway to the next place scheduled for repairs or lane additions.

</comment></comment><comment><USER49> That's because income taxes on the wealthy are way too low, which incentivizes stuffing income into real estate, stocks, and bonds.

Earn a million dollars worth of either earned or unearned income, and you pay either (simplistically) 39.6% on earned and 23.6% on unearned income. That's too f'n goddamn cheap. It encourages peopel to pay that tax and put it into one of the above, rather than take the risk by starting or growing a business and taking a tax deduction for business expenses.

When the silent generation was in charge of things, income tax was never less than 75% for the top tax bracket, for over 40 years. And during that time there was massive private and public infrastructure being built, and we didn't have a $20 trillion national debt.

</comment><comment><USER50> I suspect that part of the problem is that expertise doesn't reside in monolithic corporations and governments anymore, but in specialist consultant companies that have relatively high fixed costs and thus must charge more to make a profit. In addition I suspect that there are a lot of lookalike consultant companies that charge a lot of money in exchange for kickbacks but don't provide any value.

</comment><comment><USER51> My brother and father (concrete construction) would probably lay the blame on onerous regulation. They regularly complain about nit-picky engineers with their insistence on (in their words) unreasonable slavish devotion to engineering specifications. I'm not on the jobsite so I don't actually know.

I wonder is our construction regulations are much more stringent than other western nations?

<comment> rm_-rf_slash Count your blessings. Construction can be much harder in other countries for reasons beyond engineering and safety.

Italy, for example, is a real estate developers nightmare. Every rock or patch of dirt has a decent chance of sitting atop an Ancient Greek or Roman ruin, and the process to ensure that construction won't damage any heretofore unknown ruins is agonizingly slow.

It boils down to political power and cultural preference. Americans are fine with tearing down almost anything (except designated landmarks) to build something "better" than before.

<comment><USER52> But that problem applies to a lot of places in Europe - a lot of projects in the UK need to have teams of archaeologists in place and stuff seems to get built here at a reasonable rate (OK mostly - around Edinburgh we've had one dubious tram project and a successful major bridge and railways being re- opened).

The Crossrail project in London had over 100 archaeologists working on it:

[http://www.crossrail.co.uk/sustainability/archaeology/](http://www.crossrail.co.uk/sustainability/archaeology/)

Edit: The Forth Crossing bridge uncovered sites roughly 10,000 years old!

<comment><USER42> Crossrail appears to have been a quite successful project from the outside, I'm not sure if that's because of good PR or if it really has been.

<comment><USER53> Some of it is PR: some parts have gone badly (redevelopment of Whitechapel station comes to mind), but by and large it has gone to plan (albeit using almost all of its risk time, AFAIK!). They've by and large kept their cards quite close to their chests about things going wrong, though.

The worst parts, by and large, have been around the existing railway infrastructure: dealing with long-disused parts of railway infrastructure (partly buried and exact design and current state unknown) and with currently used infrastructure without long-closures (as well as Whitechapel, the electrification of the GWML out to Reading comes to my mind, with all its problems, which is really a separate project but Crossrail cannot run beyond Heathrow Junction without it complete).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER54> It seems to me like the biggest things that have changed are the safety regulations on the construction process itself and the finished product. The golden gate bridge was built in a few years, but with a few worker deaths. Building a new bridge like the golden gate today would likely be illegal, and take ~25 years.

<comment><USER55> That doesn't explain the difference in time/cost between current-day USA and current-day France or Japan. All three have modern safety and environmental regulations, yet two can complete jobs faster and for less money.

<comment><USER56> Maybe you don't understand the real incentives at work? In the US, it is jobs, jobs, jobs. Long, drawn out projects keep hardhats working for years. It's not about outcomes, which is a big part of the problem.

<comment><USER55> Possibly true, but the parent to my comment suggested the problem was safety/environmental regulation, which is unlikely to be the main contributor to the problem.

<comment><USER5> Sort of. That other developed countries do it cheaper suggests that having sufficient safety/environmental regulation is not the problem, but our particular implementation of such could still be the problem (if it was particularly redundant or cumbersome).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER57> So I worked for the family construction firm for a few years. The amount of ass covering, paperwork and complexity to what should be a simple thing was amazing. The amount of litigation involved when anything was not as expected was amazing vs. just trying to sort it between the those involved. My father build a $M business on just doing change orders & claims. There is your problem.

</comment><comment><USER58> We haven't "forgotten" how to do anything. We just let ourselves (collectively) become OK with projects that extraordinarily long, slow, and expensive, and the contractors aren't going to be the ones to force positive change in the system.

</comment><comment><USER59> The fastest that I've seen infrastructure put up in the US is where there are toll roads being built.

I suspect this is because there is a high incentivize to get a toll road up quickly and start generating revenue to pay back the initial investment.

Residents generally hate tolls, but its a good motivator for infrastructure to go up quickly.

I never understood why similar incentives wouldn't kick in for mass transit projects.

<comment><USER60> Americans generally have an aversion to public transit for anything beyond a air travel. Just look at the current mess NJ Transit & Amtrak find themselves in with regards to the Hudson River crossing -- some century-old tunnels and an almost-as-old drawbridge that are beyond capacity. Replacements had been funded and ground had been broken, but that money was then diverted for surface roads and highways.

</comment></comment><comment><USER61> This article from 2011 ([http://washingtonmonthly.com/magazine/marchapril-2011/more-b...](http://washingtonmonthly.com/magazine/marchapril-2011/more- bureaucrats-please/)) makes a compelling case that, after decades of cutting government jobs and creeping privatization, we simply don't have enough bureaucrats to organize and run large, complex projects anymore. These other countries having success with infra projects still do. Thus the issue.

<comment><USER62> I've been following and advocating for the Green Line Extension, a major transit expansion in the Boston area. I've been working on this for about 7 years now, through three different project teams, and I can say for certain that lack of effective management is a HUGE issue with the repeated failure of this project.

(This is the third reboot of this project... or maybe fourth. I've lost count.)

Not only does the local transit agency have _nobody_ who can manage the project, but the government doesn't even have the capability to assess contractors who might do that job. So they are totally at the mercy of commercial firms, who get paid whether they deliver or not.

The latest move is to hire a project manager for about $400k/yr (on a contract basis, naturally) to try to "save" the project, which has already spent $1 billion, yet has not put a shovel in the ground. (Ok they did fix up one bridge, woo hoo.)

Unfortunately, this PM is only one guy, and he's being assisted mostly by (you guessed it) more contractors. Even more comically, the contractors who are assisting him are the exact same ones who blew the first billion dollars.

Needless to say I don't have a lot of confidence that the incentives are aligned with me ever riding on this line.

</comment></comment><comment><USER63> After the collapse of the 35W bridge, the new bridge the took its place was built ahead of schedule and on budget. As with many things in history, disaster seems to hone our ability to overcome obstacles and get things done.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I-35W_Saint_Anthony_Falls_Brid...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I-35W_Saint_Anthony_Falls_Bridge)

</comment><comment><USER64> One important factor unmentioned so far: Federalism. The US has very strong state and municipal governments compared to France and Japan. In many cases, any one of the three can veto a project. A new commuter rail line under the Hudson River connecting NYC and NJ was begun in 2009 and NJ Gov Chris Christie killed it in 2010 (citing cost overruns), after $600m had already been spent.

</comment><comment><USER65> Is inefficiency inefficiency when it's done on purpose? That's what the article misses. The salaries of workers might not be higher than in other countries, but I bet what we pay contractors vs. what they produce is beyond astronomical. It certainly is when government contracts out software. With modern computing, I don't see why we don't keep track of costs down to the penny. A new hammer is bought to continue construction? The receipt is scanned and everything is tracked. You don't scan it, you don't get reimbursed. All actual costs are known and the profit margin can be calculated from there. It might not help that much until more data is collected and future projects can be estimated better using that data, but it sure as hell beats the current model of guessing the lowest estimate to get the contract, getting the contract, and then spending 10-1000x the estimate.

</comment><comment><USER66> I hate to be snarky, but there's another factor: laziness.

When there's a replacement bridge under construction around here, business at the local dunkin donuts goes up ALL DAY, not just at lunch and shift change. Everybody's there: laborers, supervisors, delivery drivers, managers, engineers, owners' reps from the state DOT and the towns involved.

And, in Massachusetts we have a peculiar extra cost: The police force has a monopoly on doing the traffic safety work that flag people do everywhere else. They have the right to arrest people who work in or near roads if they start working without a paid police detail on the site, or keep working after the police detail leaves. Slows work down; gives people a reason to wait around after arriving on the job.

</comment><comment><USER67> There is some poor analysis in the article with regards to Davis Bacon Act, they approached it and then missed what it was telling them.

Here in Hawaii, Laborer Prevailing Wage is $50+ an hour, toss on our mandatory insurances worker's comp and taxes and it costs almost $80 an hour to pay that worker before profit and other overhead.

Laborer rates vary by locality, but no construction worker who gets more than 3-months of Davis Bacon pay is averaging $35,000 a year it's going to be closer to $50,000.

Whenever we do any State, or Federal work there is a huge stack of submissions that have to be made, I kill trees like it was my job, shoveling paperwork out the door for these projects.

</comment><comment><USER68> > There is reason to suspect that high U.S. costs are part of a deeper > problem.

Maybe this is mere cynicism, but if the workers and materials don't cost that much more than in France, my immediate reaction is "excessive profiteering", or, to put it another way, "because we can, and nobody is stopping us".

The same applies to our unreasonably high education costs, and healthcare (although that's much more complex an issue, but at its root, it is too many fingers in the pie).

</comment><comment><USER69> I wouldn't be surprised if infrastructure costs and delays were going up everywhere though, including France. Would be nice to have actual data.

I think it comes down to new non-functional requirements: safety, environmental concerns, accessibility, liability protection, etc. With these requirements, Paris or London or New York would have never had a subway system in the late 1800's or early 1900's. By now though, all these systems have been maintained and modified to comply to the new non-functional requirements over time.

So if you added the accumulated cost of running a subway system today, while adding all the maintenance costs over time, it might be the case that the cost of building the same thing from scratch would be cheaper, but unfortunately without the benefit of having passengers enjoy it (and pay for it) for over 100 years (thus partially subsidizing the maintenance costs).

So you could even consider something as rigid as a subway system built in an "agile" way, with a quick and literally dirty MVP out of the way early, and additional non-functional requirements added over the course of decades. It's just that those requirements weren't known or wanted initially.

Now would it be ok to do the same now? Have a subway system in a city that needs it, but without bathrooms in stations, with no pollution requirements initially, not accessible to the disabled, (name your other requirements not necessary for a MVP), but with the benefit that at least it exists now, it can be subsidized by passengers that are willing to use it, so that over time those other requirements are met. Better have them later than never.

</comment><comment><USER70> It's a symptom of captured large government in the US.

The smaller 25k person town I live in doesn't nearly have the same issues. We've managed to put up new school buildings the last couple of years with not too much fuss and on budget. On the other hand, the town is relatively well off and there is seemingly good community participation.

</comment><comment><USER71> Too many value extracting rentier owners and valueless executives skimming off the top of projects done for the common good.

</comment><comment><USER72> This article was frustrating to read because it is clear the author did not do one iota of research. He identified a problem with American construction sector being inefficient or not-cost effective and did nothing to even attempt to answer why - yet still managed to stretch that one thought into a 1000 word essay.

</comment><comment><USER73> I-85 in Atlanta was repaired in just over 6 weeks. So things can get done quickly if the incentives are right.

<comment><USER74> Yes incentives. The I-85 repair had huge political pressure to get it done because a major highway was closed, inconveniencing many voters and commercial entities.

Most infrastructure projects have incentives to delay. The longer the project, the more time for more people to make more money.

</comment></comment><comment><USER75> By U.S. I think they mean the Federal Government. It's possible to build very large projects, presumably to code and under proper safety standards, in America if one desires. Here are two examples which come immediately to my mind. I'm sure they are many more examples.

[https://www.tesla.com/gigafactory](https://www.tesla.com/gigafactory) [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Park](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Park)

I think the Federal Government looks at infrastructure as jobs programs and this is why they are drawn out. The job is the end not the thing they're actually building.

<comment><USER76> Not just the federal government. State and local governments are also insanely slow and expensive.

For example: Mayor Ed Lee being fast and decisive. Building teacher housing during such a state of emergency that SFUSD has trouble filling its open teaching positions. About $300,000 of city money budgeted per unit, and it won't be open until President Trump's successor is halfway through his/her first term, if we're lucky. [http://www.sfchronicle.com/news/article/Mayor- comes-up-with-...](http://www.sfchronicle.com/news/article/Mayor-comes-up- with-40-million-for-S-F-s-11139143.php)

</comment></comment><comment><USER77> > U.S. costs are high due to general inefficiency -- inefficient project > management, an inefficient government contracting process, and inefficient > regulation. It suggests that construction, like health care or asset > management or education, is an area where Americans have simply ponied up > more and more cash over the years while ignoring the fact that they were > getting less and less for their money. To fix the problems choking U.S. > construction, reformers are going to have to go through the system and rip > out the inefficiencies root and branch.

That's a tall order. It'd be nice to see the article suggest a way to accomplish that.

</comment><comment><USER78> In my state, a contractor was paid to build a major highway using concrete pavement. If done properly, such a road should last 40 years or more, and without the thumpity, thumpity sound you get when the concrete is not put down properly.

The contractor was not experienced and totally muffed the job.

Rather than penalizing the contractor, they paid the contracter to build the road again, plopping asphalt on top of the concrete after grinding the concrete and redoing the joints that they screwed up. The asphalt hasn't lasted that long, so it will need to be redone again soon.

So, the contractor was inept, but so was the government overseer.

</comment><comment><USER79> Durability. Its one thing to quickly and cheaply add infrastructure, and I've traveled the world to places where this is accomplished at a dizzying pace. Its another thing altogether to engineer and build projects that can endure over time and in the face of natural and unnatural disaster.

Yes, the US is overdue for infrastructure investment. Yes, its costly and unproductive Federal and State entitlement obligations compete for these dollars. But the expense of building infrastructure in the US is justified by the longevity of its engineering and build quality. This is not the case globally.

<comment><USER80> It doesn't fit.

Railway systems in Japan and France (taken as example in the article) are high quality and last long as well. Yet construction railway is way less expensive there.

<comment><USER79> Rail is a special case because land issues and near zero indigenous maglev tech in the US. Think roads, airports, train stations, bridges, dams, etc. And, as importantly, the US doesn't export subsidize infrastructure companies and projects as does France or Japan. The exception is energy infrastructure.

<comment><USER81> I'm confused?

What do you mean by land use issues?

Japan isn't using maglev for commercial high-speed service yet. Japanese high- speed trains have steel wheels that make contact with a steel track, just like regular trains. Their maglev trains are limited to experimental research and development [1], or low-speed urban transit [2] (which was built as a showcase for a World's Fair).

France's and Japan's high speed trains are based on the same technology as their lower speed counterparts, including American freight rail. How does a differing level of experience maglev technology cause a difference between different countries' quality of infrastructure, when that technology isn't being used?

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L0_Series](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L0_Series)

[2] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linimo](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linimo)

<comment><USER82> Incidentally, Japan's maglev project (unlike their ordinary trains) is being done at ridiculous costs and ridiculous timeframes ($80 billion USD spent over 31 years -- 2014-2045 see [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ch%C5%AB%C5%8D_Shinkansen](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ch%C5%AB%C5%8D_Shinkansen)). Seems like the technology is very tricky and 90% of it will have to be built in tunnel.

They can support this because their ordinary transit infrastructure is built out already, the Tokaido high-speed line is at capacity (trains every 5 minutes at peak hours)! Effectively, they have the money and they've run out of more reasonably scaled infrastructure projects to build.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER83> I posted this here the other day, I'm not a civil engineer so I'm sure there are things I'm missing but the idea seems to have some merit: [https://www.jefftk.com/p/replace-infrastructure- wholesale](https://www.jefftk.com/p/replace-infrastructure-wholesale)

It doesn't address any of the numerous political issues with American infrastructure, but it could be good for repair and maintenance

</comment><comment><USER84> Why all the guesswork about why it costs so much?

That sort of thing should be readily explained by accounting: follow the money.

Public infrastructure should be financially transparent.

<comment><USER67> It is largely projects over $10,000 go out for public bidding, generally with sealed bids. For most State or Federal level stuff you can see who the bidders were, and what bid won the contract.

Municipal or County level projects probably have so much variability that it's hard to make any definitive statement.

</comment></comment><comment><USER85> In Detroit, lawmakers recently passed legislation making it hard to sue the city for crumbling sidewalks.

[http://www.freep.com/story/news/local/michigan/2017/01/05/si...](http://www.freep.com/story/news/local/michigan/2017/01/05/sidewalk- slip-fall-accident-lawsuit/96228496/)

</comment><comment><USER86> Is there any way to do a bottoms up analysis of infrastructure projects like this and see where the differences come from? I imagine the costs on projects like these are pretty finely broken down, although I'm not sure how one would go about actually getting the numbers to analyze.

</comment><comment><USER87> They are comparing it to health care, which suffers from a serious excess of bureaucracy. So I will suggest that too much bureaucratic red tape is likely a factor.

</comment><comment><USER88> As the value of a law degree has ran way ahead of more hands-on professions, this is the result. Constitutional amendment: JD's banned from public office

</comment><comment><USER89> The US hasn't forgotten. Nor is this unique to the US. It seems to be a widespread issue in the developed world.

The problem is that labour is simply too expensive now. And, to a lesser, extent, so is real estate.

In the 2000s Australia experienced an unprecedented resources boom fuelled by China's growth. This especially impacted Western Australia and Queensland. WA in particular is rich in iron ore, oil and gas and other resources.

In Perth in 2000 you could buy a 70s 3 bedroom house within a few miles of the city center for <A$100k. By 2005 it was $350k. Capital projects for the resources industries were in the works amounting to over A$100B. All of these have a huge construction component that soaked up the construction supply.

In the 90s you could build a house in as as little as 3 months. From the early to mid 2000s that time frame is now closer to a year and costs 5 times as much.

So homes became much more expensive. Of course building commercial and industrial property also got more expensive. Property costs are a significant input cost into any business that operates there. Increased residential costs soak up disposable income and lead to wages growth. Increased wage costs makes things more expensive and the cycle continues.

So Perth transformed in the 1990s from a city that was very affordable with a good standard of living to one of the haves and have nots. The haves are those in the construction and resources industries. They were making crazy money. Everyone else was pretty much a loser.

Arguably this is dutch disease [1].

So now the city wants to do things like build train lines. Well labour is stupidly expensive because the cost of living is so high and buying up real estate to put said train line on is also super expensive.

A lot of people don't seem to feel this because they're incumbents (ie they bought their houses 15+ years ago). Others have immigrated so have foreign money bypassing the local economy.

So look at the Second Avenue Subway as one example. $17B for a few miles of tunnels? Really? Well that's the cost of labour in the US and real estate in Manhattan. Since it's underground I don't imagine a large percentage of the total cost is real estate either.

So it seems like when a lot of this infrastructure was built, the relative cost of labour was much lower. The standard of living was also much lower, apart from the 1950s and 1960s, which can be viewed as a transitional anomaly more than a normal equilibrium.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutch_disease](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutch_disease)

<comment><USER90> The article specifically claims labour costs aren't that much more than in other locations, Japan in particular. Certainly not enough to explain the huge differences in project budgets.

<comment><USER26> I read that in the article too. But, I still wonder: could it be that the annual salary of a worker is not the end of the story? In other words, if the _process_ is so slow in the US, and an American project takes 2 years instead of 1 year (for a comparable Japanese or French project), then costs are effectively double.

Also, I don't think the article mentions the _benefits_ costs: healthcare and pension costs for government and union workers in the US are higher than in other countries.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER91> Do these construction costs inefficiencies also appear in construction projects that are privately funded? Or is it just publicly funded projects?

<comment><USER92> At least in my city, nearly every construction project, private or no, receives (often unnecessary and/or astroturfed) public scrutiny.

</comment></comment><comment><USER93> Because the developers have learned how to play politics for more money?

</comment><comment><USER94> Too much compliance and suing by lawyers/everyone.

</comment><comment><USER95> Is excessive profit taking eating up the productivity?

<comment><USER67> Not here labor is almost always our largest cost by far and away. Labor costs are typically 4 or more multiples of profit for most of our work.

<comment><USER95> It labor's like 80% of marginal costs 1/4 of it would be tremendous profit margins matched by exceptions like google and pharma. You can see why I'm probing. Can you disclose the typical industry margin?

Are your costs Hawaii costs as the username suggests?

<comment><USER67> Yes, Honolulu County.

We are typically lucky to make 10 to 15% profit on Prevailing Wage Work, (Federal or State).

We do occasionally but it's generally luck coupled with good management and having the ideal crew on the job.

[https://labor.hawaii.gov/rs/files/2012/12/WRS489.pdf](https://labor.hawaii.gov/rs/files/2012/12/WRS489.pdf)

Prevailing Wage Schedule for Hawaii for Public Works. New York localities are even higher.

We do laborer classification work, with some small percentage of "Operators". The skilled trades are even higher.

The next bump for Laborer 1 (what we pay the workers when they are performing asbestos removal) occurs in September 2017. At that point they will be making $55.66 an hour.

We pay the entire Base wage and Fringe to the workers, as opposed to union shops.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER96> It's not that we have forgotten. It's the fact that regulation, time to get approval, and other red tape make the timeline longer. Gone are the days when things just get done.

<comment><USER97> But, from what the article was pointing out we're comparing place like france and japan which have as many if not more regulations.

<comment><USER96> It's not how many regulations there are, it's more about how much time and effort it takes to conform to the regulations.

<comment><USER97> So, your argument is we enforce are regulations better?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER98> An African government official visits Europe. There, a European government official invites him to his luxury home. The African is shocked.

He asks "How can you afford such a house if you a just a government official?"

The European says: "Look out of the window. can you see the bridge?"

The African: "Yes"

The European: "See, the government paid for two train tracks but the bridge has only one."

The African says: "I understand".

2 years later the European official visits the African in Africa. He invites him into his house and his house is a luxury palace.

Now the European is shocked. He asks "How can you afford such a palace? Recently you were so impressed with house and now you live in a palace?"

The African says: "Look out of the window. can you see the bridge our taxpayers paid for?"

The European: "No."

<comment><USER68> Lmao. To one who was born and raised in Africa, this is both funny and, too often, lamentably accurate.

<comment><USER9> I've seen this joke before, but it wasn't about Africa. In Russia, a similar one was told in the 90s, except it went like so:

Yeltsin visits US on an official trip; Clinton is hosting. The banquet is lavish, and after gorging himself on delicacies, Yeltsin asks Clinton where the money for all that came from. Clinton gestures him to the window, and points at river, with bridge in the distance.

"See that bridge?"

"Yep."

"We budgeted 100 million dollars for it, but our innovative construction companies managed to complete it for 50 million. The rest of it went into our reception fund".

Next year, Clinton visits Russia. The banquet is even more lavish. Clinton asks Yeltsin the same question. They walk to the window, and Yeltsin gestures at the river.

"See that bridge?"

"Um... no?..."

"But we budgeted 100 million dollars for it. So..."

Which, I guess, also tells you a lot both about how US was perceived in Russia back then (I'm sure the notion that American contractors could do the work _under_ budget is utterly unbelievable to most Americans; yet its believability is at the heart of this joke).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER99> The solution is shrinking the state to the bare minimum and making as many transactions as possible voluntary.

<comment><USER100> I wish the Libertarians who post this solution ("shrink the state to the bare minimum") would ever actually show us where it's working in practice, to provide a decent quality of life for people.

In China, they're building mad infrastructure--big state. In Europe, they're providing a good quality of life--big state.

The "small state" places I can think of, none of them are places people are flocking to for an improved quality of life.

Why can't we see how well this idea works out in practice? Why does no one ever say "look at [minimal-state place X] and see how people are happy, thriving, and free"?

<comment><USER101> Let's be honest, there are not that many examples to choose from.

What I like about China is, it illustrates how effective a mostly benevolent dictatorship is. It is the optimal political system imho, provided it remains benevolent of course, which is no small feat.

Provided they don't trip and fall, if China is not the absolute supreme leader of the planet in 25 - 50 years I will be shocked.

<comment><USER102> > _Let 's be honest, there are not that many examples to choose from._

Yes, I think that's the point. There are decent numbers of places where government has neither the ability or desire to regulate heavily. None of those places seem to have blossomed into oases of free enterprise and infrastructure construction.

<comment><USER103> This point is likely subject to the "correlation is causation" debate. All the countries doing well with big governments are also likely resource-rich and home to ancient empires and culture.

What countries have small states that you are referring to anyway? Zimbabwe? Burma? Equador? Places in the jungle? There are lots of other reasons these places might not be economic powerhouses. It takes a lot more time to trade coconuts through a deep jungle.

Just because it seems difficult now under a heavy antiquated state-controlled system, doesn't mean, say, something like a crypto-currency-backed decentralized world isn't possible. We very well could one day be paying taxes just to local governments, and many local governments compete for our citizenship through things like low taxes. Cut the 25% u pay in taxes that goes to military related expenses (because, say, china now becomes the world's "supreme leader" as someone else said), and now we are well on our way to a small-state government.

I hope we can fix these problems. Things are so inefficient. I'm excited to see how far decentralization can take us.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>