There are all kinds of infrastructure

Joel Kotkin, whose ground-breaking thinking on everything from Japan's corporate structure to how cities form and operate, published an interesting article in the Washington Post on Sunday which bears some thinking. He says, infrastructure spending is fine, if it is spent on the right things.

For years I have wondered why our infrastructure has been crumbling across the country - from highways to basic public amenities. Kotkin points out that places like New York have spent money on their bureaucracy and on projects like the new Yankee Stadium instead of investments in maintaining and improving streets and subways. He also points out that investments like convention centers offer two perils - they produce, like sports stadiums, intermittent and relatively low paid jobs.

Kotkin suggests a simple litmus test - will the proposed funding increase productive capacity and raise incomes across the board - that means avoiding the flashy. Based on the experience of how funds like revenue sharing (which produced during its fifteen years -1972-1987) which created a ton of convention centers - the prospects are not good.