Must-Read: Larry Summers: Building the Case for Greater Infrastructure Investment

Must-Read: Note that the case for greater infrastructure investment is close to orthogonal to the case for bigger government deficits ending in a larger target national debt, and that both are together each close to orthogonal to the case for larger swings in the government’s fiscal balance–bigger surpluses in times of boom to create the fiscal space so that you can run bigger and more stimulative deficits in times of recession. Larry is here making a case that I believe is intellectually irresistible for the first only. But the cases for the second and third are, I believe, intellectually irresistible as well:

Larry Summers: Building the Case for Greater Infrastructure Investment:

The issue now is not whether the US should invest more but what the policy framework should be…

There is a consensus that the US should substantially raise its level of infrastructure investment… [to] can create quality jobs… provide economic stimulus without posing the risks of easy-money policies… expand the economy’s capacity… and mitigate the huge maintenance burden we would otherwise pass on to the next generation. The case for infrastructure investment has been strong for a long time, but it gets stronger with each passing year, as government borrowing costs decline and ongoing neglect raises the return on incremental spending…. Just as the infrastructure failure at Chernobyl was a sign of malaise in the Soviet Union’s last years, profound questions about America’s future are raised by collapsing bridges, children losing IQ points because of lead in water and an air traffic control system that does not use GPS technology. The issue now is… what the policy framework should be. There are five key questions:

[1] How much more do we need to invest?… [2] What is the highest priority?… [3] How should investment be financed?… [4] What about the private sector?… [5] How can we be sure investment is carried out efficiently?… Every year that we allow our infrastructure to decay raises the burden that our generation places on the next. We will not always be able to borrow for the long term at a near zero interest rate. However the election turns out, a major infrastructure investment programme should be adopted by the president and Congress in the spring of 2017.

Thus (3) really does not belong on this list–it is a separate question. But (1), (2), (4), (5)–how much? what? how to harness private-sector initiative? and how to maintain efficiency?–are things that even moderate quality political reporters should be asking and reasking candidates for president and for other offices–federal, state, and local–this fall.

I’m not holding my breath. Our country’s political reporters are, by and large, uninterested in public policy and unconcerned with informing voters–who are interested in public policies and their effects. And they aren’t even very guide at covering the election-as-contest: as if they were horse-race reporters who knew nothing about the key fundamentals of bloodlines, jockeys, and tracks.