US infrastructure crumbling as the rich get richer

We all know about the infrastructure problem in the US. US capitalism is so busy spreading freedom around the world it cannot afford to fix its roads. American ingenuity comes to the rescue though as motorists around the country become tired of messed up tires and damaged vehicles. Business Week reports that there is even a website http://www.savemytire.com that motorists can hook in to and download phone apps that list all the bad potholes around the country. The website for the Tacoma Weekly, a Tacoma Washington paper has a feature, the Pothole Pig, where it has pictures of a ceramic pig stuck in some of the worst potholes in the city. The feature has increased readership, says BW. One Hamtramck resident was so tired of the problem he went and bought $20 of asphalt and filled a pothole himself.

The structure of American society is in a mess. The cost of bringing the roads, bridges, dams and other social superstructure up to scratch is extensive and has been referred to as the  "Third Deficit” by economists. What with the shifting of auto production to Mexico, China and the southern US in search of cheaper Labor power and a Union free environment, the city of Hamtramck and much of the state of Michigan is actually in a state of severe depression. Detroit, once the heart of what made America powerful and a few thousand people extremely rich is like a ghost town.

“There isn’t enough spare cash to repave a single street” says Hamtramck’s mayor Karen Majewski and street “repairs have become an unaffordable luxury.” officials claim. This will only get worse as US states are looking at $125 billion in accumulated deficits. Here in California where we have a Democratic governor, Democrats and Republicans (with the assent of the state’s top Labor leaders) are in the process of forcing workers and the middle class to fill a gaping $25 billion deficit. This comes on the heels of previous deficits of as much as $23 billion.

All states are short of cash or have massive deficits. New York doesn’t even have the money to replace a bridge that is desperately in need of replacement. All of New Jersey’s revenue cannot be used for infrastructure spending as it all goes to pay debts. “There’s just no identifiable source for the money, and I don’t see that there will be anytime soon” says James Earp, a state transportation commissioner.

This is absolute nonsense. We have said repeatedly and tried to show on this blog that the claim by the mouthpieces of capitalism in their media and their two political parties that there is no money is completely false. The greatest obstacle we have to overcome in US society is the belief in people’s minds that there is no money or that we are in difficult economic times. From the capitalists point of view we are always in difficult economic times whenever workers’ struggle for a better life; a bigger share of the national wealth pie, either on the job or in the form of social services like transportation, medical care, housing, education etc.

You can read the papers of the bourgeois media throughout history and as workers fought to improve our conditions these struggles were always met with charges of impending catastrophe. The struggle for the 8 hour day, the capitalists argued, would destroy civilization and prosperity. They opposed sick leave and unemployment benefits because they would cause laziness as workers were being paid for not working. Of course, they don’t work and reap lots of rewards,; they think we’re like them you see.

The reason that the inspirational movement in Wisconsin has a program of concessions as opposed to gains is because the bosses, supported by the Union officialdom, have convinced people that there is no money for what we need. It is this we have to overcome. US society is awash with cash as we have stated many times. As a previous blog yesterday pointed out, corporations and the rich have, through their monopoly of their two parties, Democrats and Republicans, shifted the tax burden further on to the backs of workers and the middle class and pocketed more for themselves. And why do we have to pay moneylenders?

Let us remind people. There is the couple of trillion dollars that is being spent in Iraq and Afghanistan and the building of bases all around the world. There is the two trillion the CEO’s are sitting on because they are on a strike of capital and won’t let it go unless they can make more money. How many potholes would that $5 billion John Paulson received last year fill. I can’t say “earned” because he did no productive Labor for that money.

As we pointed out before, we are here in California having wages, jobs, social services savaged by the Democratic governor Jerry Brown and yet there is incredible wealth here. This former left/liberal ideologue never even raised in his campaign the need to tax oil as it comes out of the ground despite California being the only state that doesn’t do so.

We wrote on September 17th
California is home to 95 Billionaires, out of 946 total worldwide, according to Forbes 2007 Index of World Billionaires, and the state is home to many millionaires. Los Angeles County had 268,136 millionaire households as of 2006, the largest number of millionaires among the counties in the U.S. and 23 % of the total for the state. Orange County had 116,157 millionaire households and San Diego 102,138. Santa Clara County has 74,824 millionaires. *

These are a few “identifiable sources” that come to my mind.

*  http://www.missionbayrealestate.info/real_estate_articles/where_do_millionaires_live.html