John Oliver on Infrastructure

Given that American attentions spans have grown so short that the only way we can learn anything is through comedy, John Oliver’s report on infrastructure is a welcome addition to the debate. He gets some things wrong, but many things right. The Antiplanner was flying to Washington DC when the report was first broadcast, so this commentary is a little late. But if you haven’t seen it, you can watch it below.

Oliver notes that the American Society of Civil Engineers gives a “D-plus” grade to the state of our infrastructure. But he points out that asking civil engineers to grade infrastructure spending is “like having the state of our nation’s tennis balls assessed by the American Society of Golden Retrievers.” Too bad he doesn’t remember this rule later in the broadcast when he notes that both the AFL-CIO and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce want to increase federal spending on infrastructure, suggesting that if these traditional antagonists agree on something, it must be right. Of course, what they agree on is that Americans should pay more taxes so their members can get more money from the feds.

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In a segment on dams, Oliver complains that Texas has just seven dam inspectors for 7,400 dams while Alabama has no dam inspectors. But why should inspections be the job of the government? It seems like insurance companies could or should be handling that task. The real question is whether dam owners will be legally liable for any problems caused by dam failure. If they are, they’ll have incentives to maintain them; if not, then no amount of dam inspectors is likely to fix them.

The fundamental fact that Oliver (and most other commentators) missed is that infrastructure that is paid for out of user fees is in pretty good shape. The infrastructure that is in poor share tends to be infrastructure that is paid for out of tax dollars. This means that increasing taxes to repair infrastructure is likely to be counterproductive.

As Oliver correctly notes, “there is nothing politicians like more than to use oversized scissors to cut ribbons,” while maintenance is politically boring. Unfortunately, he implies that increasing the gas tax will help remedy infrastructure problems when all it would do would be to give politicians more money to cut more ribbons for more useless projects that won’t be maintained.