Well, while I have no way of assessing what's minor and what's major, here's what I can see. Firstly, "transportation" is consistently the first item on the list of the investment areas mentioned. Secondly, this is the first item on the list of the specific stuff: "Implement a bold, visionary plan for a cost-effective system of roads, bridges, tunnels, airports, railroads, ports and waterways, and pipelines in the proud tradition of President Dwight D. Eisenhower, who championed the interstate highway system." Observe that "roads and bridges" come first, in line with what The Donald actually spoke about on the campaign trail. No mention of "hospitals and schools", interestingly enough. Source: https://www.donaldjtrump.com/policies/an-americas-infrastructure-first-plan
To be fair, there is sometimes a cloud in the sky, but even then for some reason they often refer to it as a "kumo" ...
Who said the government owns it? . Since 2010, the Energy Department has invested more than $100 million to advance a resilient grid infrastructure that can survive a cyber incident while sustaining critical functions. The Department’s cybersecurity work involves ongoing collaboration with a number of public and private partners including the Department of Defense, the Department of Homeland Security, the National Institute of Standards and Technology, the intelligence community, private industry and energy-sector stakeholders.
Alright Marty, let me try a different approach with you. Our infrastructure in this country is shit. Both sides of the political aisle agree with that. It's a populist idea that usually gets support from everyone because it's typically loaded with enough fat to feed everyone. My whole argument, or point really, was, what is so radical about this. In fact THIS in the only part of the Trump plan that BOTH democrats and republicans agree with. I mean this is the only normal, rational, reasonable thing he has promoted and yet you draw this plan out as the part that is suspicious or crazy, or I don't actually know what you are trying to pull out of this. LOL. Furthermore, the amount of money he is throwing at is NOTHING. Marty, we spend 450 billion a year servicing our national debt. That's money that gets nothing in return. So spending 100 billion a year on infrastructure if anything should be controversial with how small it is. Hell what do I know.
How did you get the idea, Mav, that I think infrastructure spending would be radical or controversial? Again, you won't get me to disagree with you on the broad framework. But, guess what, the devil is always in the detail. My concern is that the Trump plan, basically, just makes very little sense, is all. It makes especially little sense if you're a rural voter. As to the interest on national debt, I disagree with you there entirely. You actually get a LOT in exchange for the billions you pay. Arnd $200bn / year is a small enough price to pay for the ability to run a persistent deficit and the USD to be the reserve ccy for the whole planet. This is how the US projects its influence and promotes its valuesl. Peanuts, in the grand scheme of things, wouldn't you say?
HA! Broadband across the entire country... GOOD LUCK WITH THAT. Great idea in principal, would allow a pivotal shift at the ground level for the people to transition into a new "connected" economy with huge applications opening up in many different sectors, ability to work from home and so on. As usual, take a half good idea and add politicians to it and ensure you get a MASSIVE cluster f%@#. Just ask Australia how this is going. Originally touted as a fibre-to-home network (NBN) that would lay the future fiber network that could then be upgraded at the exchange level at will as new advances in tech come to the market place out into the future once the base fiber network was installed. Fast forward and what actually gets installed is a fibre-to-exchange and a ad hoc steaming pile of shit. Some places get fibre-to-node then use existing copper to the premises (bottle neck), others piggy back on the existing pay TV cable network in areas were its available (purchased for a nice profit that massively benefits said pay TV companies) and is a current and future bottle neck, some places actually got a full fibre-to-house (usually only in the electorates of politicians that hold balance of power for the sitting government), others get a satellite that is bound to be a future bottle neck (and forever massive ping times). The network will not be future proof, isn't even the basic infrastructure to allow network wide upgrades into the future, doesn't have a fixed "standard" network wide and eventually the bullet will have to be bit and the left over copper network to the house will NEED to be replaced with something (probably 2 tin cans with a long bit of string between them). As controversial as this infrastructure build is (and ALL public funded infrastructure projects are world wide), you would think that the basic goal no matter who or what party, would be that it was done right the first time with a eye on TOTAL future costs (So as to save the PUBLIC purse long term) and it would be a network wide "standard" to at least allow long term cost savings and the ability to roll out network wide upgrades/fixes. Once again, governments love to penny pinch today and leave the mess for some future sucker to try and solve, costing 4-8 times as much in the long run. Of course, the best thing for governments to do in these situations is pour massive amounts of public money into building public infrastructure and once done, privatize it and sell it off for 10 cents on the dollar. Leaving the public purse in debt AND the people then have to purchase the service off a private company for profit. Good luck EVER finding a internal party, let along a ruling party and opposition that can set aside their personal short term benefit so as to actually deliver a publicly funded project that actually benefits the PUBLIC as its only goal. Is it any wonder that special interests are able to so easily get their way and benefit massively while suckling at the public purse nipple.
A little off topic but US highway system was originally a defense initiative during the cold war. Had massive amounts pumped into it to create the routes to quickly transport military equipment country wide. Now, instead of spending that money at home in the US to maintain and upgrade the existing infrastructure, its spent overseas "pacifying" countries that have non-existent WMD's then building roads there. Its a win-win really, as long as your Halliburton building the infrastructure and Shell who gets all the oil assets and resulting revenues that have been "liberated" and gets to use the infrastructure that Halliburton so thoughtfully constructed on the US tax dollar.
I don't disagree with anything you said. I'm not in charge of the spending so I'm just reporting the rhetoric. Of course Washington is gong to f*ck it up. My only point on this thread was what was so different about Trump. I'll give him credit in that at least he sees the benefit of stopping nation building and building infrastructure in the middle east and doing it here at home.