2 Trillion for infrastructure. Is it enough? Probably not.

Dean Baker breaks down the number:

Okay, it is more money than even Bill Gates, Elon Musk, and Jeff Bezos have, put together. That probably still doesn’t give people too much information since most people don’t have much familiarity with these folks’ fortunes. But it might be helpful if the media made some effort to put the proposed spending in President Biden’s infrastructure package in a context that would make it meaningful.

The spending is supposed to take place over eight years which means that it would be equal to just over 0.8 percent of projected GDP over this period. At $250 billion a year, it comes to about $750 per person each year over this period. It is less than 40 percent of what we are projected to spend on prescription drugs over this period and less than half of the higher prices that we will be paying as a result of government-granted patent and related monopolies. (For some reason, the money transferred to the drug companies and other beneficiaries of these government-granted monopolies never gets called “big government.”)

Anyhow, instead of reporting $2 trillion as some big scary number, often not even telling people the time period involved, it would be helpful if news outlets tried to put the number in contexts that would make it meaningful to their readers. We get that reporting big numbers is a cool fraternity ritual among budget reporters, but making these numbers meaningful is actually supposed to be their job.

250B a year is not that much relative to our economy's size. AOC argues we should be shooting for 10 trillion, and I think she's right.

But without anyone putting the numbers in context, it will be hard to get public support for what seems to be an outrageously large number.

The media, almost all of it, continually fails to provide context for budget numbers, such that 99% of the population has no idea of what these numbers mean. That's a tough environment to form good policy in.


I think the lack of reporting timescales for these bills is a fair criticism. I also think talking in relative rather than absolute terms can be more informative. I mean, I think you do need both, but often times leading with relative rather than absolute makes more sense.

Think of weather reports, for instance. Talking in terms of the actual temperature generally makes sense because we all have familiarity with the basic units. If it's July and I tell you the high tomorrow will be 76, or if it's December and I tell you the high will be 52, you have enough context around that to know if that's a hot or cold day, both because you know what 76 and 52 feel like, and have a baseline for what July and December are generally like. What you really care about is "will it be hot or cold tomorrow," but because you have the right context, just telling you the degrees helps you answer the question.

But pretty much none of us have that kind of context for the federal budget. It would be more helpful to say something like "Biden proposes to spend 3 times more (or whatever the figure is) on infrastructure over the next 15 years." Throw in context around what predictions are for economic growth relative to today for good measure, and that's even more helpful.

If we reported the weather like we do the federal budget, we'd be reporting that the current temperature in Maplewood, NJ is 282.0389.


Okay, but even airhead gun fetishist Lauren Boebert makes it sound awesome! 


PVW said:

I think the lack of reporting timescales for these bills is a fair criticism. I also think talking in relative rather than absolute terms can be more informative. I mean, I think you do need both, but often times leading with relative rather than absolute makes more sense.

Think of weather reports, for instance. Talking in terms of the actual temperature generally makes sense because we all have familiarity with the basic units. If it's July and I tell you the high tomorrow will be 76, or if it's December and I tell you the high will be 52, you have enough context around that to know if that's a hot or cold day, both because you know what 76 and 52 feel like, and have a baseline for what July and December are generally like. What you really care about is "will it be hot or cold tomorrow," but because you have the right context, just telling you the degrees helps you answer the question.

But pretty much none of us have that kind of context for the federal budget. It would be more helpful to say something like "Biden proposes to spend 3 times more (or whatever the figure is) on infrastructure over the next 15 years." Throw in context around what predictions are for economic growth relative to today for good measure, and that's even more helpful.

If we reported the weather like we do the federal budget, we'd be reporting that the current temperature in Maplewood, NJ is 282.0389.

 this is true.  As soon as I heard the $2T was over 10 years, I was underwhelmed by the proposal.


Relative to what Trump spent on infrastructure, it's a significant amount.


Well, relative to what anyone has spent on infrastructure in a generation, it's a lot.

Which is why it's not enough.



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