Spend More on Infrastructure - Now Now Now

Liberals have continued to beat the drum about infrastructure spending. Basically the argument is that our roads and bridges are in extreme cases of disrepair and interest rates are bargain-basement level, so we should do it now.

There's a great edition of EconTalk with a debate between libertarian Russ Roberts and Keynesian Robert Frank. There's one major point that Russ kind of hinted at, but didn't develop enough. The point is that the government (all levels) spends $350 Billion/yr on infrastructure and to make the case that Orszag and Frank want to make, they have to argue that what we currently spend isn't enough. Instead, they just say that infrastructure needs funding.

A reasoned argument would be we need to spend $X on infrastructure, and we're currently spending $Y so we need to increase spending by $(X-Y). Their argument is "We need to spend $X on infrastructure and it doesn't cost very much to borrow $X right now, so let's do it."

On top of that, as Russ alludes to, at all levels of government we spend $5-6T, the pro-infrastructure argument has to include the point that we can't afford to reduce spending on anything else--infrastructure spending is the least important item we spend money on. Otherwise, we should reduce spending elsewhere and reassign it to infrastructure.

This is another trick Democrats use when talking about spending. They never, ever compare spending on different programs; everything's urgent and critical--healthcare, social security, infrastructure, research, education--and all equally so. Libertarians have to change the terms of these debates to include prioritizing budget items.