US spends over half of its industrial output on the military while its infrastructure is collapsing and social unrest is rising.
LOL, no one measures defense spending by just comparing industrial output and defense spending. That’s assuming defense spending comes totally out of industrial output, which is just not true. Some of the spending is from industry output when a country manufactures weapons, equipment, and such. But a lot of that is personnel costs like salaries and veteran benefits. Instead, the universal comparison is against total GDP.
And yet, infrastructure is indeed collapsing while social tensions continue to rise as lots of recent studies show. Ukraine war alone has cost US untold billions that are going down a black hole instead being spent on fixing the country.
The infrastructure issue has a lot more to do with the building patterns in the US. Suburbs are built with expensive to maintain amenities at very low densities. That makes it so that land values (and therefore property taxes) cannot support the municipal’s maintenance costs. No amount of dialing down defense spending would solve the infrastructure issue.
It’s not just the suburbs that are failing. It’s bridges, power plants, roads, city infrastructure. While asinine suburb culture certainly makes things worse, it’s clearly not the only issue. It’s obvious that if all the resources US spends to fuck over people in other countries were devoted to improving the lives of people in US then the situation would be different. US regime spent literal trillions on projects like Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Libya and other atrocities. All of that comes directly at a cost of investing in domestic infrastructure.
Nope, suburb culture is at fault. There simply aren’t enough funds to go around to maintain all the bridges, roads, and other infrastructure that it takes to run a city when it is low density. The suburbs have also produced a pattern of bleeding the city centers of their potential. Cities have some of their best land sliced and diced for the all mighty automobile, both through enormous freeways and parking lots. Spending on the armed forces is a pittance next to the misappropriation of resources towards the automobile.
That particular factoid about concrete should have an addendum attached. It was to build what has been dubbed “ghost cities”, cities that remain largely unoccupied. These were produced by local governments taking on debt. That has produced a debt bomb that is not unlike the issues that suburbs have produced in the US. Suburbs in the US were built without regard to the cost of maintenance and services compared to tax revenue. Then 30 years down the line, the maintenance bill comes due and there is nothing to pay it with. China has saddled itself with that.
I absolutely am envious of China’s dedication to HSR. It’s frustrating that the US has such rampant car brain that it’s basically impossible to build any HSR here. Then whenever there is a project, any missteps are looked over with a magnifying glass while automobile boondoggles get a complete pass.
That’s incredibly reductive logic, and suburb culture isn’t unique to US either. Canada has suburb culture that’s quite similar, yet things aren’t falling apart at the same rate here.
It was to build what has been dubbed “ghost cities”, cities that remain largely unoccupied.
And again, the reason China has HSR is due to the fact that there is central planning. The central government can create large scale projects and then contract them out to companies to implement. There is no equivalent mechanism in US. What’s worse is that in absence of any central direction the worst kinds of companies end up dominating so much of the rail that originally existed got torn out in favor of highways.
Ghost cities aren’t a real thing. That’s just long term planning which people in the west couldn’t wrap their heads around because it’s not possible under western capitalist system.
You might want to read that article in its entirety. There are no figures available on how the ghost cities as a whole are filling up. Without that data, there’s no way to know if cities will stay solvent. We do know that there is a mountain of debt involved. What happens in a few years when their streets start breaking down and there is no way to pay for them because people have just started moving in? And there we return to the same infrastructure problems that the US has. Too many obligations combined with dumb growth.
There is no equivalent mechanism in US. What’s worse is that in absence of any central direction the worst kinds of companies end up dominating so much of the rail that originally existed got torn out in favor of highways.
It’s more complicated than that. The US also has more veto points to HSR construction. There are mechanisms like environmental reviews and hearings that can be used by opponents to draw a project out and make its costs increase rapidly. China also can just bulldoze anyone’s house that they want. That can still be done in the US, but it’s more difficult.
We do know that there is a mountain of debt involved. What happens in a few years when their streets start breaking down and there is no way to pay for them because people have just started moving in?
You get that China’s a planned economy right. What happens in that situation is that the government steps in and either creates state companies or contracts existing companies to do the work.
Too many obligations combined with dumb growth.
That’s a heck of a way to describe bringing people out of poverty and into modern life.
It’s more complicated than that. The US also has more veto points to HSR construction. There are mechanisms like environmental reviews and hearings that can be used by opponents to draw a project out and make its costs increase rapidly.
Oh please, if you seriously believe that environmental concerns are the reason you don’t have HSR then I have a bridge to sell you.
China also can just bulldoze anyone’s house that they want.
LOL, no one measures defense spending by just comparing industrial output and defense spending. That’s assuming defense spending comes totally out of industrial output, which is just not true. Some of the spending is from industry output when a country manufactures weapons, equipment, and such. But a lot of that is personnel costs like salaries and veteran benefits. Instead, the universal comparison is against total GDP.
And yet, infrastructure is indeed collapsing while social tensions continue to rise as lots of recent studies show. Ukraine war alone has cost US untold billions that are going down a black hole instead being spent on fixing the country.
The infrastructure issue has a lot more to do with the building patterns in the US. Suburbs are built with expensive to maintain amenities at very low densities. That makes it so that land values (and therefore property taxes) cannot support the municipal’s maintenance costs. No amount of dialing down defense spending would solve the infrastructure issue.
It’s not just the suburbs that are failing. It’s bridges, power plants, roads, city infrastructure. While asinine suburb culture certainly makes things worse, it’s clearly not the only issue. It’s obvious that if all the resources US spends to fuck over people in other countries were devoted to improving the lives of people in US then the situation would be different. US regime spent literal trillions on projects like Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Libya and other atrocities. All of that comes directly at a cost of investing in domestic infrastructure.
We can compare with China to see what could be done differently. China used more concrete in 3 years than US in all of 20th century, they built 27,000km of high speed rail in a decade. This is what a government that cares about serving its people as opposed to playing imperial games looks like.
Nope, suburb culture is at fault. There simply aren’t enough funds to go around to maintain all the bridges, roads, and other infrastructure that it takes to run a city when it is low density. The suburbs have also produced a pattern of bleeding the city centers of their potential. Cities have some of their best land sliced and diced for the all mighty automobile, both through enormous freeways and parking lots. Spending on the armed forces is a pittance next to the misappropriation of resources towards the automobile.
That particular factoid about concrete should have an addendum attached. It was to build what has been dubbed “ghost cities”, cities that remain largely unoccupied. These were produced by local governments taking on debt. That has produced a debt bomb that is not unlike the issues that suburbs have produced in the US. Suburbs in the US were built without regard to the cost of maintenance and services compared to tax revenue. Then 30 years down the line, the maintenance bill comes due and there is nothing to pay it with. China has saddled itself with that.
I absolutely am envious of China’s dedication to HSR. It’s frustrating that the US has such rampant car brain that it’s basically impossible to build any HSR here. Then whenever there is a project, any missteps are looked over with a magnifying glass while automobile boondoggles get a complete pass.
That’s incredibly reductive logic, and suburb culture isn’t unique to US either. Canada has suburb culture that’s quite similar, yet things aren’t falling apart at the same rate here.
Ghost cities aren’t a real thing. That’s just long term planning which people in the west couldn’t wrap their heads around because it’s not possible under western capitalist system. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2021-09-01/chinese-ghost-cities-2021-binhai-zhengdong-new-districts-fill-up
And again, the reason China has HSR is due to the fact that there is central planning. The central government can create large scale projects and then contract them out to companies to implement. There is no equivalent mechanism in US. What’s worse is that in absence of any central direction the worst kinds of companies end up dominating so much of the rail that originally existed got torn out in favor of highways.
You might want to read that article in its entirety. There are no figures available on how the ghost cities as a whole are filling up. Without that data, there’s no way to know if cities will stay solvent. We do know that there is a mountain of debt involved. What happens in a few years when their streets start breaking down and there is no way to pay for them because people have just started moving in? And there we return to the same infrastructure problems that the US has. Too many obligations combined with dumb growth.
It’s more complicated than that. The US also has more veto points to HSR construction. There are mechanisms like environmental reviews and hearings that can be used by opponents to draw a project out and make its costs increase rapidly. China also can just bulldoze anyone’s house that they want. That can still be done in the US, but it’s more difficult.
You get that China’s a planned economy right. What happens in that situation is that the government steps in and either creates state companies or contracts existing companies to do the work.
That’s a heck of a way to describe bringing people out of poverty and into modern life.
Oh please, if you seriously believe that environmental concerns are the reason you don’t have HSR then I have a bridge to sell you.
HSR has the most value in large empty stretches between large cities, no need to bulldoze anyone’s houses. Also, you’re peddling more bullshit about China again https://www.vice.com/en/article/wjwd3m/photos-of-chinese-homes-owned-by-people-who-refuse-to-sell