When Democrats and Republicans agree, I get nervous. It often means that they agree to grab my wallet.
Both parties now agree that we don't have extra budget money lying around, but both say government does need to spend more on "infrastructure."
Even conservatives want more spent on roads and mass transit.
The reason, advocates claim, is that infrastructure, unlike most government spending, has a "multiplier effect" -- it creates new wealth by doing things like speeding up travel.
Well, it might.
Advocates also point out something that seems obvious to them: Infrastructure is a job that must be done by government. Who else would launch big projects like the New York City subway system? Subways are what Big Government supporters call a "public good."
They are important to many people, but there's no way that business would build subways or run them, they argue. Subways lose billions of dollars. Entrepreneurs would never invest in subway cars or dig subway tunnels -- there's no profit in that.
But often what we "obviously know" ... is not so.
Most of New York's subways were actually built by private companies. Few New Yorkers even know that. Private companies dug the first tunnels and ran the trains for about 40 years. But when they wanted to raise the fare to a dime, the politicians said they had to "protect" the public. Government took over the system, saying only "public ownership" could guarantee affordable fares.
