For want of a nail

For want of a nail the shoe was lost.
For want of a shoe the horse was lost.
For want of a horse the rider was lost.
For want of a rider the battle was lost.
For want of a battle the kingdom was lost.
And all for the want of a horseshoe nail.

Four days after the I-35W bridge collapse in Minnesota, John McQuaid writes in The Washington Post (“The Can’t-Do Nation”) about how America has lost the problem-solving ability to tackle big projects.

Once, this was our specialty. Canal across Central America? No problem! World’s largest office building? Designed and built in 16 months! Man on the Moon? Before this decade is out!

“We're supposed to be an optimistic, problem-solving nation. ... But somehow, can-do America has become a joke, an oxymoron. We’ve become the can’t-do nation, slipping on every banana peel on the global stage,” writes McQuaid.

He says big government has failed in part because much of the people’s business has been outsourced.

For the past quarter-century, more and more government work has been done by contractors. This started under Reagan and has continued, unabated, under Democrats and Republicans alike.

There are more people than ever working at government jobs, but fewer and fewer of them are actual government employees. And contractors show up not just in jobs that were the original outsourcing candidates — office cleaning, IT — but in jobs that scream government: NASA space shuttle launch personnel, Voice of America broadcasters, security forces guarding military personnel in Iraq.

With the contracting comes lack of accountability.

With the demonization of big government comes the political inability to rally support for big government projects like developing sustainable energy, planning for climate change, investing in our public schools, and creating a healthcare system that provides universal care, not to mention the decaying bridges, roads, tunnels, pipelines, dams, and other bits of essential infrastructure that won’t last forever.

Rally support and rally the funding to pay for them. Anyone who has lived abroad knows that our tax burden is near the bottom of comparable industrialized nations. Politicians run from tax increases like the plague. Nobody likes paying taxes, and no one wants their taxes increased. But there is only so much that we can push onto the next generation.

Yes of course, the wealthy should be taxed more. But so should the middle class. Yes, it may mean fewer Lexus sales and fewer McMansions, but if that means better-educated youngsters, fewer women forced to decide between a meal and a mammogram, or one less bridge falling down, I think it is a remarkably good bargain.

(And we should avoid starting unnecessary wars, but that’s another post; this one’s too long already.)

Meanwhile, we are stuck with the infrastructure we have. The New Orleans Times-Picayune today reports (“Corps analysis shows canal's weaknesses”) that parts of the levee system may fail under a surge of as little as 6–7 feet. Officials of the Army Corps of Engineers say the vulnerable areas are now protected by massive storm gates installed after the city was inundated when Hurricane Katrina hit. Readers commenting on the article seem less than reassured. And after the performance of the Corps’ flood protection system in 2005, who can blame them.