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Kasz216 on 06 August 2011
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richardhutnik said:
Kasz216 said:
Well, if they would of did it sooner, maybe we wouldn't of lost our Triple A credit Rating.

I wonder if the Tea Party wants to cut it for the reason a lot of people who aren't libertarians or conservative want to get rid of it.

Which is, local raising of funds ends up more efficient, because government funds are handed out poorly, and based on whoever asks hardest, so you end up with a bunch of inefficient "Bridges to nowhere" and roads that are built, but then never maintained cause nobody in the communities wanted or needed them anyway.

Well, end result of doing this will  be that poor regions will have worse roads, and more wealthy regions better roads, if they decide to maintain roads, will end up having better roads.  The concept of a nationwide highway system has no guarantee of being maintained.  Maybe this would be for the best anyhow, because the building of the national highway system did result in a shifting of America towards an increase use of petroleum.  This increased use made sense at the time when America was the world's leading producer of petroleum.

I think a part of this, politically, is that Washington threatens states with mandates being passed by withholding highway funds if they don't accept it.  The use of funding is a bribe to get compliance by states:

http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20061004163905AASP9cg

I would have others look into this, because my memory has me remembering federal funding for highway funds being withheld to push through mandates, for some reason, I thought went beyond just highway funds.

That already happens.

Truth is, federal spending on roads used to be a lot smaller then it is now, and has moved more and more towards more federal based spending.

A lot of areas are already intentionally graveling a lot of their roads rather then pay the upkeep costs.

 

Roads are a real pain to figure out how to fund properly, some people suggest that you base it on straight population but that ignores the areas that have massive amount of people driving through them etc.