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Comment by _xnmw | Hacker News Reader

Because the US has an unlimited supply of the world's reserve currency, so there is no incentive to be economical.

I respectfully disagree. A lot of the capital projects mentioned in this article (like NYC subway station) are municipal or state projects, which don't have the ability to print money like the feds.

The money for these projects largely comes from the federal government anyways.

But the local governments executing these projects have very fixed budgets. They can't just fire up the money printer.

Local government officials have no real incentive to get the most for their money. They "get the job done", but I really doubt they are anywhere close to efficient

I think the mayor of NYC has a strong incentive to get credit for improving their subway system.

Perhaps surprisingly, the NYC subway is run by the MTA, over which the mayor has no control; it's run by the state government up in Albany.

They would, if our democracy worked better. People care deeply about where municipal tax money is going.

Unfortunately, most of the time, municipal governments are entirely controlled by an unholy alliance between local real estate moguls, and the town's chamber of commerce, so 'what their constituents want' is rarely a priority for them.

What the US does not have though, is an unlimited supply of time, and these increased program costs also drive longer project schedules. I've been watching Seattle's light rail system as it has been under development for 2 decades now - the construction itself is really quite fast! But a 20 year delay between voter approval/funding and breaking ground on the new construction is untenable. Example: South Kirkland extension breaks ground for construction in 2035, it was approved by voters in 2016.

https://www.soundtransit.org/sites/default/files/documents/s...

How even smart people have started to buy this 'Modern Monetary Theory' nonsense wholesale. The same old terrible idea resold in a new package for 1000s of years. Everytime a government runs out of money the charlatans come out and start claiming you can just magically print money without any issue.

US infrastructure spending is heavily cost-constrained though. Your argument would hold up if we were building loads of new infrastructure at enormous cost, but instead we are not building enough because the costs are too high.

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