Infrastructure: Where Has the Money Gone?

Re “The ‘90s: Private Boom Stingy on Public Good,” Aug. 5: Peter Gosselin’s attempt to shame the public into a greater contribution to the common good is based on a flawed argument. First, the comparison of public-good investments made during peacetime expansion conveniently includes the ‘30s (expansion?) and the ‘60s (peacetime?). Oh, their inclusion is rationalized--but, come on.

Second, there is a complete failure to recognize that the total tax burden as a percentage of the gross domestic product has increased from 24.7 in the 1950s to 27.8 in the 1960s to 31.5 in 1996. If the total tax burden has increased while the investment in the public good has decreased, what is that money buying? It is hard to see a convincing argument for raising the tax burden, but perhaps this is a good time to clarify the role of government.

Jon Tveten

Redlands

Your Sunday Report focusing on Atlanta’s public works woes is right on the money. For several years, the American Society of Civil Engineers has been leading efforts to build partnerships among governments--local, state and federal--to reverse the decades-long serious under-investing in public systems reported by Gosselin. In our 2001 “report card” on the 12 public systems critical to our nation’s quality of life, ASCE gave a cumulative grade of D+. (Those systems are roads, bridges, mass transit, aviation, schools, drinking water, waste water, dams, solid waste, hazardous waste, navigable waterways and energy.) We estimate investment of no less than $1.3 trillion nationwide over the next five years is needed to bring our public systems up from near-failure.

Atlanta’s problems are relatively small compared with those we face in Southern California. Energy, overcrowded schools and airports are cited by Gosselin, but who hasn’t noticed our crumbling roads and beaches often closed by raw sewage?

Paul Taylor

District Director, American

Society of Civil Engineers

Culver City

Gosselin attempted to support his argument that government spent less on public works projects in the 1990s with a few graphs and several anecdotal stories from around the nation. The one indisputable fact that Gosselin did not point out is that nondefense government spending has increased steadily and quite dramatically as a percentage of the GDP from the 1900s through the 1990s.

The question is then: Where is this money going? The answer is so-called “entitlement” programs like Social Security and Medicare. Apparently, the American public and its politicians continue to distrust government handling of public works projects (e.g., MTA’s Red Line subway), wish to maintain neighborhood quality of life rather than public works expansion (e.g., LAX expansion) and can only hope that transfer payments like Social Security and Medicare do not crowd out investment spending on failing programs like public education. Gosselin indicates that the real beneficiaries from this have been in the greedy private sector, which, he fails to point out, is us.

Bill Clenney

Van Nuys