Our Crumbling Infrastructure

If I were President, I would bring back the WPA.

After the stock market crash of 1929 the country (and in fact, the world) faced years of the Great Depression. The banks had no money to lend, businesses closed right and left, unemployment rates skyrocketed. Sound familiar?

America had never had a financial breakdown of this magnitude before, so the government was caught a little off-guard by the far-flung and lasting effects. In 1932 President Herbert Hoover authorized the creation of the Reconstruction Finance Corporation to help rebuild the wealth lost due to the Depression. In 1933, President Franklin Roosevelt expanded on Hoover's 'stimulus package and created a number of other agencies to provide aid, among them, the Works Projects Administration (WPA).

Roosevelt knew that millions of Americans were out of work and unable to support their families, but he was against a welfare system to provide aid. He thought that Americans would take more pride in working for their living than in accepting handouts. With millions of jobs to create, the WPA needed to create millions of opportunities. Roosevelt used this vast labor pool to build roads, bridges, dams, public parks and public buildings. People were paid a fair wage for a fair day's work. Most of America's public highway system was laid-out and built by the WPA. As a result of this work the United States was connected like never before.

It can be argued that the billions of dollars the US government spent on these WPA projects returned huge dividends. The nation's new highway system created the means for business to move its goods to market quickly, and to ship those goods to all corners of the country. The dam-building projects ensured the safety of numerous towns and created power generation for our growing cities and industry. Parks and libraries built by the WPA added to the quality of life for many Americans.

But by 1942 we had largely recovered from the Great Depression. Indeed, with World War II workers were much in demand. Factories were working round the clock to produce war-time goods and many of their strongest and best workers had gone off to war. The WPA, having served it's purpose, was not funded and was allowed to end.

Now, nearly 80 years later we are still driving on those same highways and bridges built by the WPA. A road system built to carry 1940's traffic is struggling to serve conditions in the 21st Century. Bridges are weakening, and even when reinforced, are too narrow to carry the traffic that funnels into them and become traffic bottlenecks. Highways that cross through cities are gridlocked, carrying ten times the traffic they were designed for. Water, telephone and electrical delivery systems are outdated and failing in many parts of the country.

What is the cost of gridlock? How many hours of productive time are lost with workers spending 2 or 3 hours each day sitting in their cars trying to get to work? Those are hours they could spend with their family or volunteering in their community. How many extra trucks are on the road everyday because traffic limits the number of miles and the number of deliveries any one truck can complete in a day?

A modern and robust infrastructure is required if we, as Americans, want to ensure our high standard of living. A dated and decaying infrastructure will drag us down and hinder the efficient running of our economy. The phone companies have done a good job of updating their infrastructure because there is a lot of money to be made there, but our electrical and water delivery systems are run by government-controlled utilities and there is no incentive for them to spend money and manpower on upgrades.

So now we find ourselves again in economic turmoil. Once again millions of Americans find themselves out of work and unable to support their families. And once again, the infrastructural framework of our country is in need of repair and rebuilding. So, let's spend that stimulus money on reinventing the WPA. Let's spend that money creating millions of jobs and give that money directly to the people who need it the most. No more of this trickle-down stuff, where we give the money to companies so they can hire new workers. Let's have the government give every American who wants to work a job building roads, building bridges, building subways and trains and monorails. Let's build the America that will carry us through the next 80 years.