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The World Socialist Web Site reports
The American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) released its quadrennial "Report Card" last month on the condition of infrastructure in the United States. Once again, the association gave the country an overall grade of D+, the same as in 2013.
The report is a damning appraisal of the state of American society under capitalism, and the Obama years, which saw essential social needs starved of funding while the stock market tripled in value and vast public resources were squandered on war. This will only accelerate under Trump.
The ASCE report assesses the state of sixteen different categories of infrastructure: aviation, bridges, dams, drinking water, energy, hazardous waste, inland waterways, levees, parks and recreation, ports, rail, roads, schools, solid waste, transit and wastewater.
Twelve of the sixteen sections evaluated earned a D grade. The report defines a D grade as "The infrastructure is in poor to fair condition and mostly below standard, with many elements approaching the end of their service life. A large portion of the system exhibits significant deterioration. Condition and capacity are of serious concern with strong risk of failure."
According to ASCE, the total costs to bring all US infrastructure into an adequate condition would exceed two trillion dollars.
[...] ASCE's answer to this crisis is not only inadequate but downright reactionary.
[...] In the section of the report titled "solutions to raise the grade" the authors suggest that "Infrastructure owners and operators must charge, and Americans must be willing to pay, rates and fees that reflect the true cost of using, maintaining, and improving infrastructure." Other sections advocate "user generated fees", hiking the gasoline tax, and other regressive proposals that would disproportionately affect the country's poorest citizens. The report also calls for more "public-private" partnerships, along with the streamlining of approval for private investment in public infrastructure projects.
Such free-market measures would only create an ever-greater class-based infrastructure system, where only those who could afford to will be able to drive on high toll expressways and bridges, send their children to quality schools, drink clean water, and live in areas not threatened with constant flooding or environmental disasters.
View the ASCE's report card here.
(Score: 2) by bradley13 on Monday April 17 2017, @07:36AM (5 children)
The ASCE report is interesting; I remember the last time it came out as well. It has it's biases, and tends to score things rather low. On the other hand, the Soylent submission is based on the World Socialist article discussing the ASCE report. Given the source, their article discusses the political aspects of the ASCE report with...a certain bias. The combination of these two is a bit bizarre.
Politics: Infrastructure is expensive. However, socialists think that money magically appears when you want to spend it, and has no end. What was the most recent? Oh, right, "free housing for all in the UK". Naive nutjobs, pure and simple.
Infrastructure: Online data from DoT on deficient bridges [dot.gov] shows steady improvement over the years. In thousands, the number of deficient bridges was 79 of 594 (2004), 72 of 601 (2008), 67 of 607 (2012) and 56 of 614 (2016). If that is indicative of the overall infrastructure (which I do not know), then the ASCE report should reflect that improvement. It doesn't...why?
Everyone is somebody else's weirdo.
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 17 2017, @09:08AM (4 children)
The word you meant to use is "Liberals".
For about the dozenth time in 48 hours, someone is describing Liberal Democracy and calling it by the wrong name.
Liberals think that Capitalism (and Oligarchy) is a workable system and that the redistribution of wealth after it is earned is a good idea.
The USA's Democrat Party is loaded with those types who think that top-down systems are OK.
Socialists, OTOH, being the owners of their companies ("the means of production"), are very aware of where money comes from.
They EARN it.
...and, BTW, they don't have non-productive people (Capitalists) skimming off profits.
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 17 2017, @10:08AM (3 children)
They have non-productive people (Socialists) skimming off profits instead.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 17 2017, @05:59PM (2 children)
Nope. You're talking about leeches and redistribution again.
Once more: That's Liberalism.
In USA, that means Democrats.
They are NOT Leftists.
They're on the Right-hand side of the political palate. [politicalcompass.org]
Socialism defined in 16 words
the extension of Democracy from politics to economics through collective ownership and workers' control of production [google.com]
Socialism defined in 13 words
social and economic decisions should be made by those whom they most affect [google.com]
Socialism defined in 6 Words
self-emancipation of the working class [google.com]
None of those include a mention of non-productive people.
Now, if you include the concept of "Everybody can do something useful for the society; let's make sure that we find that something for each individual" as well as "To each according to his need; from each according to his abilities", then you have Communism.
All Leftist philosophies start with the rights of Workers.
Nowhere in any of these is idleness considered normal and acceptable.
...much less skimming from a system into which you put no labor.
Your previous sources of "information" about "socialism" are crap.
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Monday April 17 2017, @08:00PM (1 child)
The problem for the socialistic ideas comes when labor is largely unnecessary for production. And if there's very low need of labor. Should there be a difference between people for their consumption when their contribution is redundant?
For the capitalistic sphere of ideas its much clearer. You can use the raw materials or production means you own as you see fit. No need to trade with anyone else unless you benefit. This will of course leave large groups of people without anything despite being educated and work capable.
The liberal view is the freedom of someone else enforcing what you can do or say. Not really about production means.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 17 2017, @09:04PM
Yeah. In France, they previously handled this by reducing the workweek to 35 hours.
A current Lefty candidate there has proposed further reducing that to 32 hours.
It will be interesting to see how he does in the election.
(He's VERY popular right now.)
Mondragon adapts to change by reassigning workers to divisions who haven't seen a downturn in labor requirements.
If necessary, they also reduce the number of hours each worker-owner works.
When societal stability and the wellbeing of ALL is the prime motivator and not maximizing the profits of a few, things can be a lot more humane.
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]