In the papers recently was more bad economic news. Housing starts are still in the toilet, and the economy only seems to be sputtering along. Pundits offer various reasons, as well as various fixes. Inevitably, in such a depressed economy, there will be new government stimulus spending. But what we spend it on is going to create either a light at the end of the tunnel or the headlight of an oncoming train.
Whenever I see news like the aforementioned, my biggest fear is that government will artificially inflate demand for housing, and use that to boost spending in the housing sector, which should ostensibly lead us out of the current recession. But this logic is deeply flawed. The biggest problem I see when I look at the economic picture in the U.S. is that we never successfully took a 20-year view of where we wanted our country to head back in the 1980s and '90s, when manufacturing jobs were being lost to overseas competitors. Instead of coming up with anything resembling a comprehensive plan for how we were going to shift our economy's blue collar workers into something that long-term would be beneficial to the country, we instead let them move into building houses.
The reason we did was because it was easy. Though housing construction has become somewhat more efficient over the years, by and large we still use the same construction techniques and materials that have been used for the last 50 years. Instead of looking at where we wanted to go as a country, we just let our houses get bigger. In 2004, the average home size was 2,300 square feet. Contrast that to 1970, when it was only 1,400 square feet. We let the housing industry soak up our labor problem.
But now that particular schtick has run its course. And it has been a failure. It's time to look at what we ought to spend that government money on, and it's certainly not housing.
Government has always done best economically when it provides infrastructure. We don't drive on private roads in this country, for good reason. And considering the exigencies of everything from urban sprawl to global warming, if the government wants to get involved in anything, it's got to be transportation. Transportation eats up about one-third of our energy budget in this country, and sucks virtually all of that energy from fossil fuels that have to be imported. The current system is one of amazing complexity - a true public/private partnership that includes everything from the automobiles and trucks we drive as well as the fueling stations that are on every corner.
But the one thing to remember is that before anyone got to drive the cars, or build the gas stations, the road had to be there. Using that logic, it's perfectly acceptable for government to go first, if it's building light rail through cities, or wind power farms or nuclear power plants for supplying whatever new technology that carries us where we want to go. Private industry simply can't go first. Right now, there isn't the money, and the coordination that would be required is going to need standards and guidelines that cut across industrial boundaries. Only the public sector can do that.
Such an effort would drive everything else, including providing tons of meaningful blue-collar jobs across the nation. And at the end of it all, instead of random pork distributed in construction of bridges to nowhere, we would have weaned ourself off the nations where we are currently at war, as well as creating an infrastructure that would once again make us a global leader in economic growth.
But it's going to require real vision, as well as inspirational leadership. The question in my mind is simple - who's going to step up first to the plate?
Chuck Pezeshki is a professor in mechanical and materials engineering at Washington State University.
