Thread to discuss.
Pro: American infrastructure needs investment to support growth, bridges are falling down and such. Also green infrastructure is needed to reduce carbon emissions.
Cons: it’s expensive, it will create inflationary pressure, bit of pork opportunity for every politicians special projects
All in all I’m in favour, but maybe only spend 80% or so.
We’re all over the mistimed fiscal stimulus. I don’t think now is the time to pump (even more) government money in.
If not now, when?
How about increasing tax revenue to fund infrastructure spending or shifting military spending?
I’d sooner be in favor if it was that kind of choice, raise taxes to invest in infrastructure improvements, although I’m more in favor of using that kind of revenue for social safety net like the other Biden program.
Military spending is certainly flush but good luck getting a dent in that.
Borrowing is still historically pretty cheap, so the ROE should be decent (well, if you somehow avoid inflation)
Yeah that’s fair, I could be convinced that strategic spending using very low interest rate money could be worthwhile.
I misread the thread title as Pros and cons of Biden infrastructure bull That pretty well sums up my feelings about it. 
but, what 20% do you lose? Doesn’t work that only the pork disappears
Could pay for a lot of it with a reduction of military spending. But, who would vote for that?
Infrastructure is like one of the few things the feds SHOULD be spending money on.
Cut the funds available by 20%, see what falls out. I agree you can’t explicitly cut just the pork, I’m just thinking that’s about the right ballpark to cut the ask by.
One of the unfortunate things I think is the timing of this infrastructure proposal. We’re coming off the heels of unprecedented deficit spending thanks to the virus. Now we’re left with two bad options, which is to deficit spend even more for this, or to kick the can down the road on this problem. I don’t like either option.
Link to the plan being proposed.
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whitehouse.gov isn’t a good source for information in general. Whoever is in control of the White House uses it to send out the information they want to, to represent their own interests. Independent sources are better.
Aside: One of my pet peeves with how the government does things is how they lump so much shit together in bills. It is so prevalent pork isn’t even pointed out it just gets glossed over. I don’t have a way to fix it but damn it irritates me.
??? It is a proposed bill from Biden in the white house? Why would his proposal not be a good source about his proposal?
Here is a an older recap from Business Insider.
cut military spending by 50%. still remain the #1 power house in the world.
problem solved
A lot of military spending is jobs spending. Not sure what weapons systems vs straight payroll is, but even weapon systems have contractors with payrolls. Not sure if VA is lumped in there (military spending), but that is more delayed recognition of legacy costs. Not as simple as “military is discretionary”.
I think of this as a two-pronged question. How much is good to spend now from a macro-economic point of view (obviously there will be a range of opinion as to what impacts any given level of spending would have), and how to evaluate which projects should be prioritized (ROI of some kind?). I don’t have any answers, but that is how I would start thinking about it. 
Well, except high speed rail in CA is a stupid waste of money, because I think we all agreed on that.
Only because it costs too much. Use slave labor, steal land, force companies to give us material at under-cost, etc., and it would be pretty cheap!