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Why This is Exactly the Right Time to Rebuild America’s Infrastructure

Published: Monday 26 September 2011
Nation of Change 

“The nation’s infrastructure is crumbling. Our roads, bridges, water and sewer systems, subways, gas pipelines, ports, airports, and school buildings are desperately in need of repair.”


Seems like only yes­ter­day con­ser­v­a­tive nabobs of neg­a­tiv­ity pre­dicted Amer­ica’s bal­loon­ing bud­get deficit would gen­er­ate soar­ing in­fla­tion and crip­pling costs of ad­di­tional fed­eral bor­row­ing.

Re­mem­ber Stan­dard & Poor’s down­grade of the United States? Re­call the in­tense worry about in­vestors’ con­fi­dence in gov­ern­ment bonds — Amer­ica’s IOUs?

Hmmm.

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Last week ten-year yields on U.S. Trea­suries closed at 1.83 per­cent.

In other words, they were wrong.

In fact, it’s cheaper than ever for the United States to bor­row. That’s be­cause global in­vestors des­per­ately want the safety of dol­lars. Al­most every­where else on the globe is riskier. Eu­rope is in a debt cri­sis, many de­vel­op­ing na­tions are gripped by fears the con­ta­gion will spread to them, Japan re­mains in crit­i­cal con­di­tion, China’s growth is slow­ing.

Put this to­gether with two other facts:

Un­em­ploy­ment in Amer­ica re­mains sky-high. 14 mil­lion Amer­i­cans are out of work and 25 mil­lion are look­ing for full-time jobs.

The na­tion’s in­fra­struc­ture is crum­bling. Our roads, bridges, water and sewer sys­tems, sub­ways, gas pipelines, ports, air­ports, and school build­ings are des­per­ately in need of re­pair. De­ferred main­te­nance is tak­ing a huge toll.

Now con­nect the dots. Any­one with half a brain will see this is the ideal time to bor­row money from the rest of the world to put Amer­i­cans to work re­build­ing the na­tion’s in­fra­struc­ture.

Prob­lem is, too many in Wash­ing­ton have less than half a brain.

This ar­ti­cle was orig­i­nally posted on Robert Reich’s blog

Join Na­tionofChange today by mak­ing a gen­er­ous tax-de­ductible con­tri­bu­tion and take a stand against the sta­tus quo.
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By Published On: September 27th, 2011Comments Off on Robert Reich: Why This is Exactly the Right Time to Rebuild America’s Infrastructure

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