Why is this good news? Don't you appreciate the danger of this precedent, or are you fine with mob rule?
I laugh when I hear road projects are "stimulus". Someday, people on this board will learn the difference between work and a job.
The Cal-Trans workers are fucking lazy. It took them like 2 years just to add a lane of traffic each way on a road near my house, they clogged up traffic everyday...many days they didn't even work, they just left it there.
Bernanke wanted to block the bonuses. I still think the failure of AIG is probably going to be inevitable no matter how much cash we infuse into the company. I imagine the toxic assets that exist are much more severe than anyone realizes. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/7961641.stm So the question remains: Exactly HOW did AIG screw up here? What did they do wrong to fail? What did they do in order to require the bailout funds.
Look at Barney Frank, what a dolt. Yeah, how many banks failed again? Dumbass. Trying to justify more government control of private businesses.
Therefore... building roads is bad? Nixon was corrupt. Therefore, we should abolish the office of President? barfo
no, it just seems scammy with lots of money being wasted. seems to take longer than it should all the time, I know traffic is going through there but 2 years to add two lanes of traffic...road construction just seems one of the most inefficiently run constructions out there and I would guess its due to some kind of strange unions or scammy construction contractors.
There were 25 in 2007, 3 in 2007, 0 in 2006. Since it is only March, chances are good that 2009's number will end up being higher than 2008. barfo
What I mean is, infrastructure projects are temp work. They have a beginning and an end point. I'm more interested in job creation, ones that don't end and directly and positively impact the GDP. As for the reasons roadways often look like they're done but remain unused, there could be a simple explanation. Concrete has a 28-day cure period. If you don't give it that time to set, you end up with a set of gutters in each lane where the cars drive. That being said, I agree that most road workers don't work all that hard.
Building roads isn't bad. But the way our government typically does it is bad. Typical road projects always seem to take years, and seem so incredibly inefficient, wasting so much of taxpayers money. The frustrating thing is that we have proof that when necessary, the government can make these things happen MUCH faster and MUCH more efficiently. For example, when the SF Maze collapsed in 2007, the government started an incredible bidding competition, offering the incentive of $200k for every day before schedule the project was finished (and $200k penalty for not meeting the bid date). The winning bidder bid ~$875k to finish the project while Caltrans was estimating $5.2MILLION. They finished in 25 days.
Any one road project has a beginning and an end (although I agree with the other posters that the end never seems to come fast enough). But there are lots and lots of potential road projects - we've been deferring paving and bridge projects for years and there is quite a backlog. barfo
And do those positions grow the GDP? And don't give me this, "well, we need smooth roads, blah, blah, blah...". I'm talking about positions that are more than maintenance. There are line positions and staff positions. Being on a road crew is a staff position. If you want to grow an economy, increase the number of line positions.
I would think so. The road crew spends their paychecks on beer and lottery tickets, and that money flows onward. I won't give it to you. We can all buy hummers so we don't get stuck in the potholes. Somebody has to do the grunt work. We can't all be investment bankers. barfo
