The Wheels Are Coming Off

[prole]

America Goes Dark

By PAUL KRUGMAN

 

The lights are going out all over America — literally. Colorado Springs has made headlines with its desperate attempt to save money by turning off a third of its streetlights, but similar things are either happening or being contemplated across the nation, from Philadelphia to Fresno.

 

Meanwhile, a country that once amazed the world with its visionary investments in transportation, from the Erie Canal to the Interstate Highway System, is now in the process of unpaving itself: in a number of states, local governments are breaking up roads they can no longer afford to maintain, and returning them to gravel.

 

And a nation that once prized education — that was among the first to provide basic schooling to all its children — is now cutting back. Teachers are being laid off; programs are being canceled; in Hawaii, the school year itself is being drastically shortened. And all signs point to even more cuts ahead.

 

We’re told that we have no choice, that basic government functions — essential services that have been provided for generations — are no longer affordable. And it’s true that state and local governments, hit hard by the recession, are cash-strapped. But they wouldn’t be quite as cash-strapped if their politicians were willing to consider at least some tax increases.

 

And the federal government, which can sell inflation-protected long-term bonds at an interest rate of only 1.04 percent, isn’t cash-strapped at all. It could and should be offering aid to local governments, to protect the future of our infrastructure and our children.

 

But Washington is providing only a trickle of help, and even that grudgingly. We must place priority on reducing the deficit, say Republicans and “centrist” Democrats. And then, virtually in the next breath, they declare that we must preserve tax cuts for the very affluent, at a budget cost of $700 billion over the next decade.

 

In effect, a large part of our political class is showing its priorities: given the choice between asking the richest 2 percent or so of Americans to go back to paying the tax rates they paid during the Clinton-era boom, or allowing the nation’s foundations to crumble — literally in the case of roads, figuratively in the case of education — they’re choosing the latter.

 

It’s a disastrous choice in both the short run and the long run.

 

In the short run, those state and local cutbacks are a major drag on the economy, perpetuating devastatingly high unemployment.

 

It’s crucial to keep state and local government in mind when you hear people ranting about runaway government spending under President Obama. Yes, the federal government is spending more, although not as much as you might think. But state and local governments are cutting back. And if you add them together, it turns out that the only big spending increases have been in safety-net programs like unemployment insurance, which have soared in cost thanks to the severity of the slump.

 

That is, for all the talk of a failed stimulus, if you look at government spending as a whole you see hardly any stimulus at all. And with federal spending now trailing off, while big state and local cutbacks continue, we’re going into reverse.

 

But isn’t keeping taxes for the affluent low also a form of stimulus? Not so you’d notice. When we save a schoolteacher’s job, that unambiguously aids employment; when we give millionaires more money instead, there’s a good chance that most of that money will just sit idle.

 

And what about the economy’s future? Everything we know about economic growth says that a well-educated population and high-quality infrastructure are crucial. Emerging nations are making huge efforts to upgrade their roads, their ports and their schools. Yet in America we’re going backward.

 

How did we get to this point? It’s the logical consequence of three decades of antigovernment rhetoric, rhetoric that has convinced many voters that a dollar collected in taxes is always a dollar wasted, that the public sector can’t do anything right.

 

The antigovernment campaign has always been phrased in terms of opposition to waste and fraud — to checks sent to welfare queens driving Cadillacs, to vast armies of bureaucrats uselessly pushing paper around. But those were myths, of course; there was never remotely as much waste and fraud as the right claimed. And now that the campaign has reached fruition, we’re seeing what was actually in the firing line: services that everyone except the very rich need, services that government must provide or nobody will, like lighted streets, drivable roads and decent schooling for the public as a whole.

 

So the end result of the long campaign against government is that we’ve taken a disastrously wrong turn. America is now on the unlit, unpaved road to nowhere.

[KaskadskyjKozak]

America Goes Dark

By PAUL KRUGMAN

 

The lights are going out all over America — literally. Colorado Springs has made headlines with its desperate attempt to save money by turning off a third of its streetlights, but similar things are either happening or being contemplated across the nation, from Philadelphia to Fresno.

 

Sounds good! We need to be consuming less energy! Be Green!

[prole]

 

Anarcho-primitivists rejoice!

 

Edited August 11, 2010 by prole

[KaskadskyjKozak]

 

When your left-wing enviro nuts post pics of the planet at night showing N. America all lit up as case-in-point of our profligate energy consumption, I'm sure you'll have the same response. Oh, yeah, consistency is not your strong suit, is it.

[prole]

 

Sorry, what's your argument again?

 

[billcoe]

We must place priority on reducing the deficit, say Republicans and “centrist” Democrats.

 

Given the direction our deficit is going, it's a huge train wreck in process and it needs to be stopped. Even Obama is starting to take notice of it. We need to reverse the Bush tax cuts (it's happening) sure, but this guy is missing the big elephant in the room for not even breathing a word on our crazy overseas war spending that has been running us into the dirt.

[tvashtarkatena]

I would love see all our streetlights go dark. Why the fuck do we have those glaring pieces of shit again? Carry a fucking headlamp and STFU.

[prole]

 

Electricity for the masses was always just a commie pipe dream anyway...

 

 

 

[tvashtarkatena]

Lighting doesn't consume much energy. Most if it goes to transportation, industry, and home water heating and air conditioning. In all those areas, we've taken our first baby steps towards conservation - there's tremendous room for improvement in without much real impact on our lifestyle.

 

One example: about 45% of industrial energy use goes towards producing steam. Steam systems are typically a hodge podge and pretty inefficient, but they're relatively easy to make far more efficient with some simple, inexpensive changes that typically pay for themselves well within a year by increasing energy efficiency by up to 25%. Almost no steam plants have done this yet, but nearly all of them a looking for ways to improve efficiency.

 

One thing our species is really, really good at is adaptation.

[billcoe]

Electricity for the masses was always just a commie pipe dream anyway...

 

It should be all free man....Free! http://cleanfreeenergy.org/

[JayB]

[billcoe]

That looks like it might end poorly.

 

How about:

 

Little bit more obvious.

[JayB]

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