Where Government More Than Pays for Itself

In 2007 a bridge over the Mississippi River collapsed during rush hour, killing 13 people, injuring 145, and breaking one of the major travel routes in Minneapolis. This bridge had been rated “structurally deficient” in 1990 and 2005, and investigators eventually concluded that it collapsed because of the combination of a design flaw and heavier traffic and weight than it had been designed to carry.

Since the collapse, states and the Federal Highway Administration have tried to speed up inspection and repair of bridges, but 69,223 American bridges – 11% of the total – are currently rated structurally deficient. Repairing or replacing these structurally deficient bridges would cost about $71 billion, but in 2009 we spent just $5 billion on our aging and over-loaded bridges. (Transportation for America)

Our government saves lives every day. In accidents that don’t happen, poisonings that don’t occur, infections that never take hold. These things that don’t happen are invisible to us. But if we lived in a more chaotic society we would spend more of our time and energy battling chaos, and some of us would not have made it this far.

Our government also makes it possible for us to make a living, in whatever way we do so. It provides the framework, the stability, the opportunities, that structure our lives. Imagine you’d been born in Pakistan. Would you have the life you do now? Almost certainly not. And that shows that the lives we enjoy are partly the result of our own choices and efforts, but equally a result of the context we happened to be born into. In the United States we enjoy the benefits of many generations of Americans trying to create better lives for themselves and their children.

Many people nowadays say that government doesn’t do anything, or doesn’t do anything right. That’s simply not true, but when people hear something a lot they often start to believe it.

Most government services are invisible or nearly so when they are working well. Who thanks the Federal Highway Administration every time they drive uneventfully over a bridge? But every day we rely on a multitude of these little necessities, which don’t seem so little if they aren’t there.

So one of my goals here is consciousness raising. It’s natural that we notice mistakes, failures, and omissions more than the everyday successes that we have lived with all of our lives. In 2009 a water main broke and two million people in the Boston area were told to boil our water for two days. Some businesses had to shut down, and huge amounts of time and attention went into water during those days. I noticed. We all noticed.

Most days, however, we get to take water and bridges and lots and lots and lots of other things for granted. And that allows us to focus on our work, families, and other things we want to focus on, rather than just coping with problems. Government solves a lot of problems for us before they even become problems.

I am concerned, therefore, that the current drive towards broad-band budget-cutting may be terribly self-destructive for our country.

More hopefully, knowing where government is especially cost-effective may give us clues about how to use the levers of public policy to help our economy and our people.

In this section, therefore, I am accumulating information about specific government services that more than pay for themselves – or, conversely, instances where cutting government spending is pound foolish.

The Feeblest Branch : An underfunded court system weakens the economy as well as access to justice, The Economist, October 1, 2011. “In Florida in 2009, according to the Washington Economics Group, the backlog in civil courts is costing the state some $9.8 billion in GDP a year, a staggering achievement for a court system that costs just $1.2 billion in its entirety.”

Life in the Slow Lane : America’s Transport Infrastructure, The Economist, April 28, 2011. “In the World Economic Forum 2010 league table America now ranks 23rd for overall infrastructure quality, between Spain and Chile. … Up to $80 billion a year in additional spending could be spent on projects which would show positive economic returns.”

Cutting Poison Control, New York Times, March 3, 2011. “While a single visit to an emergency room can cost hundreds or thousands of dollars (often paid for by the government), a call to a poison center costs the government only $30 or $40. A study in the Journal of Medical Toxicology estimated that the poison centers saved the State of Arizona alone $33 million a year.”

Back to Our Country’s Finances

Or other topics that might be of interest …

The Federal Budget : Where does the money go?

Health Care Inflation : The crux of the problem

Social Security : Not the problem, not the solution, but needs tweaking

Military Spending : How do we make it best serve our country’s interests?

Economic & Environmental Sustainability : The economic implications of environmental changes

Our Current Tax System : Where we are now

Raise Our Taxes! : Testimony before the Massachusetts’ Legislature’s Joint Committee on Revenue

Thought Pieces : Articles by other people that got me thinking

Bibliography : Books worth knowing about

Organizations : Where to get more information and/or move into action