Larry Summers: We Need to Invest in Infrastructure
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Interest rates are low. Construction unemployment is high. There's no better time than now to invest in major infrastructure projects. Economist Larry Summers asks what we're waiting for. Read more at BigThink.com: http://goo.gl/oxGE4E Follow Big Think here: YouTube: http://goo.gl/CPTsV5 Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/BigThinkdotcom Twitter: https://twitter.com/bigthink Transcript: If a moment when a long term interest rate of 2.2 percent and a construction unemployment rate that is in double digits, if that kind of moment is not the right moment to fix Kennedy Airport I don’t know when that moment will ever come. We as a country have been chronically under investing in infrastructure for a long time. Almost never in the history of the United States since the second World War have we been devoting as low a proportion of our national output to investments in infrastructure as we are today. And you see the consequences in potholes in our highways. You see it in occasional bridge collapses. You see it in the fact that we have thousands of schools across the country where paint is chipping of the walls even as we tell our children that education is the most important thing. You see it in the fact that we have an air traffic control system in the United States that relies on vacuum tube technology and where it’s almost impossible to get anyone to do a repair who’s under 60 years of age because they don’t have any contact with the relevant technologies. You see it in the fact that in a variety of wireless and broadband technologies the United States lags a number of other countries. So I think there’s enormous opportunity for productive infrastructure investment and certainly at a moment when the long term interest rate is so low there’s a great deal of investment on which we could earn a social return very much in excess of the social cost. Directed/Produced by Jonathan Fowler, Elizabeth Rodd, and Dillon Fitton
Comments
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This guy should spend money fixing the infrastructure in his mouth. I've seen homeless people with better teeth
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"Under investing in infrastructure". Infrastructure will always be more successful if designed, built, and maintained by the private-sector (ie. entrepreneurs, risk-takers, etc.). Taxes accomplish nothing but theft and economic-rot.
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hard to imagine when that will be remedied. maybe after all the unions have been castrated maybe?
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Larry Summer's = "Let's deregulate US banks so they're competitive!" "Let's prevent any regulation of credit default swaps!"
Why do you have this guy on again? -
In San Francisco, one of the richest cities in the country, our roads are TERRIBLE. We can't afford to fix them because we have too many government employees that do little and collect huge salaries, and too many former government employees that do nothing and collect huge pensions.
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Same in Canada. Developing oil production infrastructure seems to be trumping all other expenditures these days.
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The interest rate is low because of meddling politicians via the Fed. This is NOT a good thing, though they are trapped in this model because the whole parasite economy desperately depends on these low rates to barely stay even. With rates at emergency levels the economy can't even create any quality jobs much less improve wages. As consumer prices rise while wages stagnate and good paying jobs disappear one has to ask, haven't you guys done enough already?
For every dollar pilfered from the middle class and poor (via many dimensions of taxation and currency debasement) less than a penny goes to this so called infrastructure. Why don't you just get out all together, let people keep their money and allow someone more efficient to do the job?
Why would anyone want to let proven bunglers continue to run things? -
I think I know what the guy means by investing in infrastructure, I mean when the German economy experienced hyperinflation they invested in infrastructure and they did come back. Only to ignore the fact that they reversed the process with WWII. Just sayin'
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First you have to invest in taxes for the rich, so that you can give a penny to all those millions who don't have a single penny. Then these pennies will be spent on bread, and there will be jobs for bread-makers, and stores that sell bread.
As long as a huge portion of the population effectively can't enter the economy in any way shape or form, then the economy will not be able to grow. Welfare (that includes free healthcare and free education) is the single most capitalistic program ever, because welfare means people can eat instead of stealing food, they can get an education instead of taking unskilled job, they can go from one field of work to another because the education is free so that when technology makes factory-workers redundant then the factory-workers can get a new education and find a new job without being unable to pay for the mortgage. And what kind of communistic country gives trillions to a bust corporation and want nothing in return? All the other sane capitalist countries has this penalty-clause: If you want to get bailed out by the government, then the government take the majority of the shares of the business that the government is bailing out as payment so that the government (the people) can get back its bailout money in the future by selling the shares. THIS is capitalism. Not "here's some money from the taxpayer, no strings attached". -
sigh If only Larry Summers had been in a position of financial power in te federal government, maybe somebody involved in developping an economic stimulus plan, that would have been great... Oh wait.
Fucking hypocrit. -
Our infrastructure seems fine to me, better than most countries really. I think teachers getting paid more is more of a priority than infrastructure. Besides, the ones paying for the repairing of structures are the people who own them; and the reason they don't get repaired is because they can't afford it, and it's only falling apart because they're poor.And the government is sure as hell not going to fix a bunch of poor people homes for free. Our government has a lot of problems.
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I find it weird how he has this funny smile after every sentence
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Hahahahaha, Larry Summers on big think ? That's it for me I'm fucking out of here.
The IMF is a criminal organization. You should be hanged as a collaborator Larry. -
Yes, we need to invest in infrastructure, but real infrastructure, not Wall Street. Like you seem to always be ok with. We need to improve roads, bridges, pipes, electricity, internet, etc. Not oil or so. We need to invest in new technologies.
It's nice to agree with you on something, though. Too bad you screwed our system by helping to deregulate banks :\ -
Brazil could have a good infrastructure, but our poor planning leads to well-know brazillian corrupted system. Do you think that Russia is corrupted? They look worst in the chart compared with us, but these numbers come from polls. At least haft of our population is bind and the other haft-haft is part of the system, leading us to 25% ok persons, in a country where voting is compulsory.
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Good to see some people in the comments have woken up from the Keynesian BS. People need to google "broken window theory" and stop regurgitating mantra's force fed through compulsory schooling to the benefit of cronies like this guy and his socialist buddies.
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fuck...he's gotten so old so fast.. :(
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I agree completely, but the answer is not for the government to do it. That will inevitably lead to a lengthy and financial wasteful process. The private sector can solve all of the problems he listed cheaper and more efficiently.
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Or, just wait until a bridge falls down, and then rebuild it. That's a much more exciting way of doing things, and it's good for the news media.
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this man has shifty eyes
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