Here's a mental framework..............

 In a world where the economy becomes a key tool that great powers use to prosecute their conflicts, it’s completely impossible to just “stick to the economics”.

-Noah Smith, from here  

Federally-driven infrastructure spending?

......................................................Stepping off the bandwagon.

On better theory..........................

"I could see that I was not going to cope as well as I wished with life unless I could acquire a better theory-structure on which to hang my observations and experiences. By then, my craving for more theory had a long history. Partly, I had always loved theory as an aid in puzzle solving and as a means of satisfying my monkey-like-curiosity. And, partly, I had found that theory-structure was a superpower in helping one get what one wanted. As I had early discovered in school wherein I had excelled without labor, guided by theory, while many others, without mastery of theory failed despite monstrous effort. Better theory I thought had always worked for me and, if now available could make me acquire capital and independence faster and better assist everything I loved." 

-attributed to Charlie Munger

Speaking of downtown Newark..........

At the top of the photo:  the Square's second completed roundabout.  Only two more to go.

At the bottom of the photo:  the war zone moves to the front of our office.

The adventure continues.

The view from my office desk..............

...............as the sanitary and storm sewer separation project in downtown Newark comes to our neighborhood:

 

The future takes shape...............

Historic downtown Newark, Ohio is undergoing a bit of a change, infrastructure-wise.  A century old combination sanitary and storm sewer has to go (an EPA mandate, but a very common sense one), and is being replaced by new, and separate, systems.  The City has taken the opportunity to make other changes while the streets are torn up.  You can see its shape now.

The changes around the Courthouse Square are significant.  Much wider sidewalks, a new two-way traffic flow, narrower driving lanes, pedestrian-friendly cross walks, round-abouts at each corner. Unfortunately, there will also be way fewer parking spaces. The total project is now about 25% complete.  The adventure continues.  Here is what it looked like 45 days ago:

Construction continues.............................

................................................in downtown Newark.

They get to our street next year.  Can't wait.......................

Kids of all ages love watching the big equipment at work

If you enjoy watching..........................

................................construction projects, this video is for you:

.

The back story:   More than 100 years ago, very large, hand-laid brick sewer lines were installed through Newark's downtown.  These lines handled both sanitary and storm sewer.  They were, for the most part, fairly effective.  Torrential rains, which we get from time to time,  were a bit of a problem.   The surge of storm water from deluges had the tendency to overflow the sanitary sewer treatment facility, causing raw sewage to enter the Licking River, south and east of Newark.  Not much of a problem for Newark, but our friends downstream were not very happy with the situation.  For the past twenty-five years of so, the EPA has been telling Newark to fix the problem.  The fix is very expensive.  It took The City of Newark quite a while to develop their solution.   The above video captures the first phase of the fix.  The old combination sewer is being replaced with new, separated, sanitary and storm sewer lines.  It is a bit of a mess in downtown Newark right now, but the finished product (18 months away?) should be great.

The Will.........................

Our ancestors were bold and industrious. They built a significant portion of our energy and road infrastructure more than half a century ago. It would be almost impossible to build that system today. Could we build the Hoover Dam today? We have the technology. We seem to lack the will. Unfortunately, we cannot rely on the infrastructure of our past to travel to our future.
-Alex Tabarrok, as excerpted from this blog post

Fifty years ago............................

JFK and the beginning of Interstate 95...................

Why am I not surprised...............

"On November 3, 2009, Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway announced it would acquire the remaining 77.4 percent of BNSF it did not already own for $100 per share in cash and stock - a deal valued at $44 billion. The company is investing an estimated $34 billion in BNSF and acquiring $10 billion in debt. On February 12, 2010, shareholders of Burlington Northern Santa Fe Corporation voted in favor of the acquisition."
-Wikipedia


Burlington Northern Sante Fe rail routes..............

 From Mark Perry.  Full post here.............

Keep betting on the optimist.....

WRM reminds us:
"At a moment when miasmic doubt about long-term American prospects is common, it’s easy to forget that America has rich resource endowments, a strong institutional framework to manage them, and a dynamic private sector to exploit those resources and export them to a thirsty world."


Full post is here.

There was a time...............

......................when the notion of a constitutionally limited federal government was accepted as fact.

The year is 1846.  The President is James K. Polk.  The issue is an  "An act making appropriations for the improvement of certain harbors and rivers" passed by Congress. Polk vetoes the bill.  Full presidential veto message is here.  Fun and interesting excerpts here:

"It must produce a disreputable scramble for the public money, by the conflict which is inseparable from such a system between local and individual interests and the general interest of the whole."

"On examining its provisions and the variety of objects of improvement which it embraces, many of them of a local character, it is difficult to conceive, if it shall be sanctioned and become a law, what practical constitutional restraint can hereafter be imposed upon the most extended system of internal improvements by the Federal Government in all parts of the Union."

"The Constitution has not, in my judgment, conferred upon the Federal Government the power to construct works of internal improvement within the States, or to appropriate money from the Treasury for that purpose."

"The general proposition that the Federal Government does not possess this power is so well settled and has for a considerable period been so generally acquiesced in that it is not deemed necessary to reiterate the arguments by which it is sustained."

"The whole frame of the Federal Constitution proves that the Government which it creates was intended to be one of limited and specified powers. A construction of the Constitution so broad as that by which the power in question is defended tends imperceptibly to a consolidation of power in a Government intended by its framers to be thus limited in its authority. "The obvious tendency and inevitable result of a consolidation of the States into one sovereignty would be to transform the republican system of the United States into a monarchy." 

"It not only leads to a consolidation of power in the Federal Government........, but its inevitable tendency is to embrace objects for the expenditure of the public money which are local in their character, benefiting but few at the expense of the common Treasury of the whole."

"It will produce combinations of local and sectional interests, strong enough when united to carry propositions for appropriations of public money which could not of themselves, and standing alone, succeed, and can not fail to lead to wasteful and extravagant expenditures."

"The wisdom of the framers of the Constitution in withholding power over such objects from the Federal Government and leaving them to the local governments of the States becomes more and more manifest with every year's experience of the operations of our system."

"The treasure of the world would hardly be equal to the improvement of every bay, inlet, creek, and river in our country which might be supposed to promote the agricultural, manufacturing, or commercial interests of a neighborhood."

Work yet to be done...............

     In short, humans were not created to be receivers only, or clients only, but also creators.  God gave them minds and imaginations, as well as courage and a zest for trial and error.  He implanted in them a desire to better their condition, for their families and for the whole of human society.  The creation of wealth is a social task and the supportive efforts of all are necessary to its accomplishment.  It is especially necessary for the poor.  Since we now know that wealth can be created in a sustained and systematic way, then - given the immense suffering of so many poor - economic development has become a moral obligation.  We are obliged to work to shape institutions and systems that permit its flourishing.  The cost, otherwise, is widespread misery, from which so much of the world today, lacking such institutions, unnecessarily suffers.
     Both the traditionalist economic vision and the Socialist economic vision have proved inadequate.  The capacity of capitalist and democratic systems to raise up hundreds of millions of the poor has been abundantly proved.  Such systems to not promise, or deliver, paradise on earth.  They are but instruments of our larger moral and cultural purposes.  But it is precisely the leaders and thinkers of the moral and cultural sectors of the free societies that have been most deficient in grasping the moral and spiritual possibilities these novel systems of political economy have opened before us.  The thinkers of the Scottish Enlightenment achieved an unprecedented revolution in the human ethos, whose spiritual possibilities have yet to be realized.  It is my hope that moral and cultural leaders, philosophers and poets, theologians and prelates, will awaken from their slumbers, grasp these possibilities, and fashion from them maxims of practical moral guidance, for which so many economic activists are manifestly thirsty.


Michael Novak, This Hemisphere of Liberty
     

On doing.............

And here we are.................

"The more I examine the universe and study the details of
its architecture, the more evidence I find that the universe
in some sense must have know we were coming."
-Freeman Dyson