Hey, my hometown is the first one on your list (Rochester, NY). When I was little I used to look at maps from before the Inner Loop and wonder how it was possible to inflict so much destruction on one downtown. There’s really nothing else like it, that I’ve seen.

Yep, Jen. Similarly: Anon – I know this is offtopic for streetsblog, and maybe you’ve successfully trolled me; I’ll say this once and not reply on this subject again for a while…

> Apparently several MILLION additional unemployed people doesn’t matter to you- as long as it’s not you, I suppose.

The suggestion is that they’ll be employed better, faster, and more productively if we don’t have the state direct the employment. We “need” the state to direct employment ’cause, under guise of Republican ‘free’ market ideology, the fedgov has aided and abetted an honest to christ cabal of industrialists and financiers in their distortion of the economy wholesale, to their personal benefit.

The crash of ’08 wasn’t the failure of the market; it was market — millions of distributed individuals, each minding their own business — finally waking up and smelling the arsenic in its coffee.

The government is trying to _prevent_ the economy from adapting to the our new reality, a reality in which (for instance) we can’t live on debt and buy 15m cars per year.

Their idea of “fixing” it isn’t ours, yours or mine.

The government is going to put people to work taking loans, building and buying cars, and supporting the 2007-economy. The government should cope with this Scandinavian-style: nationalizing what’s left of the major insolvent banks, selling their parts at a loss to the banks who didn’t play loose, letting everyone who made a bad business bet swing from their noose, and giving temporary and direct unemployment assistance in the form of negative taxes to those who need to survive the months until hiring recovers.

I’m with Amity Shales; the Great Depression was initially caused by the sort of human behaviors that markets exist to both channel and correct, and exacerbated by paniced, flailing government reaction to the first.

We’re going to do the exact same thing this time. Only in 2015-2020, when we’re finally emerging from this, there won’t be a glut of cheap oil to float us out — we’ll be staring down the maw of the peak of all peaks.

Individuals cannot coordinate economies. Markets must do it, and they must be properly incentivized. Our government is in the business of poisoning the incentives, so the “free market,” like any algorithm fed dirty input, produces bad outputs.

The algorithm isn’t the problem. It’s the criminals distorting the incentives.

I may need less coffee.

I think peak oil and global warming are much bigger problems. I think they should make us reconsider the value of economic growth and begin the transition to a sustainable, steady-state economy.

Since someone else just mentioned my web site about removing freeways, I will add that I also wrote a little book (only 64 pages) on the transition away from a growth economy, The Politics of Simple Living, which you can also read on my web site at http://www.preservenet.com/simpleliving/PoliticsOfSimpleLiving.html

Global warming probably will lead to suffering in Africa and parts of Asia that are as bad as the suffering that occurred in Europe during the first half of the twentieth century – famine and mass movement of global-warming refugees. These effects of global warming should also give us enough perspective to see that infrastructure/entitlement is a relative minor problem of economic adjustment.

interesting site about removing freeways.

apologies if it’s been linked to here previously

No doubt the first half of the 20th Century was a horrow show that hopefully will not be repeated, although with global warming and nuclear proliferation I would not rule it out.

I think a better paralell would be someone born in then-prosperous Argentina in 1950. Then again, I’ve heard that just recently the Buenos Aires subway has started to expand again for the first time since then.

But to put our problems into perspective, imagine someone who who was born in France in 1890. At age 24, he would be drafted to fight in World War I and would see massive deaths among the people of his generation. At age 39, he would face the Depression and would have trouble getting or keeping a job for the next 10 years. At age 50, he would face the German invasion and would probably have to flee from his home to escape the invading troops; have you read Sartre’s novel about people fleeing from the Germans? At age 55, he would live in a country devastated by war and needing Marshall Plan aid to rebuild. But at age 80, he would see France rebuilt and prosperous, and he would see the European Community strong enough to prevent future wars.

I think that Frenchman would react to our complaints about infrastructure and entitlements by repeating the old French proverb: “Kvetch, kvetch, kvetch!”

No doubt Charles, and the adjustment won’t be much of an adjustment for those who didn’t get caught up in the consumption mania. To the extent that many Americans are clinging to that lifestyle, and looking for someone to sacrifice to pay, I’m not optimistic, even though I am quite comfortable. I’m worried about what the future holds collectively, and for younger generations.

Not to get the Prince upset again, but we’ve discussed the enormous (and as yet unacknowledged) cost the age 55 (rather than 62) will have on the city’s schools. One good thing about the stimulus is it might defer the re-collapse until my youngest finishes her junior year of high school, but it can only be deferred so long. At the MTA, you have all those debts, and the return of deferred maintenance. By taking payroll tax revenues away from the post 2014 period and spending them now, the Ravitch Plan might defer trouble five years, but that’s all.

What can one say about the quality of public services and infrastructure in Great Brittain from 1945 to 1980, which I agree is a good analogy? Did they build anything?

But I think you exaggerate when you say “In transportation, anything that isn’t built in the next few years will not be built at all, and frankly I’m not certain anything that is built will be maintained.” Even we have to adjust by going back to one-half the income that we now have, that would put at us at the per capita income of the 1950s – and look how much infrastructure we build during the 1950s.

I think that, when the readjustment comes, the United States will be where England was in the 1970s. At the time, the Pound was no longer accepted as a reserve currency, the commonwealth was no longer economically important, their industries were going bankrupt, and England was experiencing a drastic economic decline. But they adjusted to their more modest position in the world’s economy, and they are quite comfortable now.

Likewise in the United States. Your generation and/or your children’s generation will have to bear the disruption of readjusting after the dollar loses its place as a reserve currency and foreign countries stop financing our increasing debts. We will have to stop mortgaging the future and start living within our means. But after we adjust to our more modest economic circumstances, we will be quite comfortable.

It could be worse. You could have lived through World War I, the Depression, and World War II.

Isn’t hopping out of a 7000 pound vehicle without turning it off AND without making sure it was in park similar?

It’s like as long as a car is involved, all culpability vaporizes.

I will say that you warned us Charles.

Here is the problem — the United States may be in no position to make decisions of any kind in the future. The share of national resources going to the retired and to servicing past debts is going in one direction — up, and at an increasingly fast pace. Federal, state, local, etc.

In transportation, anything that isn’t built in the next few years will not be built at all, and frankly I’m not certain anything that is built will be maintained. If the stimulus package goes to vehicle sales with current technology, that’s locked in.

After the grabbers finish grabbing, we’re going to hear a lot about “fiscal responsibility,” mainly the responsibilities of those under age 55 when Bush said the words to settle for less.

I’m just glad that as long as I can ride over the bridge, I can bike to work even if transit collapses. But with the Ravitch Plan proposing a takeover of the East River Bridges by the State of New York, can that be taken for granted?

We can hope for bigger changes in transportation policy in the TEA reauthorization later this year.

And reforming health care will require a long period of planning. How can anyone seriously claim that a total overhaul of health insurance could be put together in the one month that we have to formulate this stimulus package?

At this point the best thing is for the federal government to deliver on its promise of universal health care, and make the savings to business and state and local government the stimulus. But I don’t think it will happen.

And remember, Albany is worse.

If the goal of conservative Republicanism over the past 30 years was to make government taxes and spending so inequitable that even those with an egalitarian frame of mind, like myself, turn against them, THEN BY GOD THEY ARE HAVING SOME SUCCESS! With cooperation from the Democrats.

It is time to reposition urban politics, having a great leader like Obama just take over the Federalist system cannot help cities. Urban politicians have to stand up and threated fillibusters just like the hill billies do.

This is utter insanity.

Apparently several MILLION additional unemployed people doesn’t matter to you- as long as it’s not you, I suppose.

Not that it isn’t worthwhile to build what usefulness we can while all that is happening.