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Our decaying infastructure: Light fixture plummets on Tobin Bridge
By adamg on Thu, 07/19/2012 - 5:43pm
The Globe reports on the latest problem on the bridge, where crews had to stop repair work last week after firefighters found potential problems with the pipes meant to provide water for fighting fires on the bridge. But don't worry, state officials assure us - the Tobin lights are held up by a completely different method than the ones in the Big Dig tunnels.
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Comments
SMALL GOV'T means we kick the can down the road
until people get hurt. That's the way Saint Ronald Reagan did it. That's the way we do it today. We really do know how to inspect bridges and we know when they need repair. Wouldn't it be awesome if we spent our money fixing them and other decaying infrastructure?
It's not as much kicking the can...
...as it is promising people money not to work. I wish I had been an adult 30 years ago so that I could have told our government "um, maybe it's not wise to guarantee the maximum one-year salary of a state employee to them for 20 years after they retire. You know, the whole people are born at a quicker rate than they die thing." That, friends, is why we don't have money to fix things.
But hey, why learn anything from Stockton and San Bernardino, California?
But they don't make the same amount of money upfront
Considering that public sector workers tend to make, oh, about 2/3s or so of their private-sector counterparts, the math works out in the end. If you want to undo that whole system, then you had better start accepting that public sector employees need to have comparable salaries to the private sector, and since you presumably won't have public investment vehicles in the form of agencies that manage retirement accounts, you'd likely see a slightly reduced amount of liquidity in stocks/funds due to the fact that private individuals tend to ignore retirement planning when the burden is placed on their shoulders rather than their employers.
Also, the whole people-are-born-at-a-quicker-rate-than-they-die thing...isn't that basically the entire underpinning of the conservative capitalist idea? "Grow your way out of debt"?
so you're embracing it?
Sure sounds like it to me. I have to applaud how hard you work to appear clever.
"Also, the whole people-are-born-at-a-quicker-rate-than-they-die thing...isn't that basically the entire underpinning of the conservative capitalist idea? "Grow your way out of debt"?"
Considering that public sector workers tend to make, oh, about 2/3s or so of their private-sector counterparts, the math works out in the end.
Sure it does.
"and since you presumably won't have public investment vehicles in the form of agencies that manage retirement accounts blah blah blah blah blah"
Who on Wall Street fed you this line of reasoning, the same people that want to privatize social security? Keep sqwaking, you're doing a great job...
Say what?
I'm not even sure what point you're trying to make. You indicate that you think I'm in league with people that want to privatize the SSA (which is not correct), but then you (I guess) criticize my assertion that, factoring in retirement, public sector employees cost roughly the same as private sector. I'm referring to cost, not necessarily output, mind you. Most conservatives seem to think hiring private sector workers is cheaper, mostly because they're less bound to any sort of obligation to keep them when they're considered "used up". Short-term profits and all that.
Anyway, I'm not really sure what position I have that you're wanting to attack and I think maybe you just didn't read my post very well.