My specific concerns with Trump's plans are that they are likely to investments in infrastructure where the private returns are highest (for example toll roads and bridges) rather than where the public gains are greatest.
At equal returns, public investments are generally superior to private investments not only because they are more liquid but also because amidst distress, public markets are more likely than private ones to offer attractive opportunities to average down.
What mothers need, as well as fathers, spouses, and the children of aging parents, is an entire national infrastructure of care, every bit as important as the physical infrastructure of roads, bridges, tunnels, broadband, parks and public works.
Democrats must adopt a progressive economic message that focuses on large, direct infrastructure investments, affordable health care, portable pensions, and public-private investments that promote advanced manufacturing.
Yes, we need a substantial investment in our hard infrastructure like roads and bridges. But roads and bridges can't serve people if they don't have the child care they need in order to go to work or the health care they need to stay healthy and participate in the workforce.
Bridges are burning all around us; bridges to responses that might have mitigated the already brutal (and just beginning) ravages of Peak Oil; bridges to reduce the likelihood of war and famine; bridges to avoid our selectively chosen suicide; bridges to change at least a part of energy infrastructure and consumption; bridges to becoming something better than we are or have been; bridges to non-violence. Those bridges are effectively gone.
Our people need significant investments in bridges, tunnels and roads.
In America, we have an infrastructure that's so bad, our roads, our highways, our schools, our tunnels, our bridges. Look at our bridges. Half of them have reports that they are in serious danger.
Allowing a private rather than a public entity to take over your toll road merely means that your tolls will have to be that much higher to cover their more expensive debt.
There's nothing magic about spending on tanks and bombs rather than roads and bridges.
I think it's basically the same game, although with a public figure like [Donald] Trump I think you are bound to consider the public persona rather than the private one. At least that was the case with that piece of writing.
I had attracted large investments into information technology and built infrastructure in Hyderabad, including India's first greenfield airport, apart from attracting the country's first private sector investments in power generation.
If you look at how the US economy has suffered over the last 15 or 20 years, it's in significant part because we haven't done the investments in research and development and infrastructure and other public goods that are necessary for our growth. And, unfortunately, we're going to be feeling that overhang for a long time to come, because it's the investments we made in the 1950s and '60s and '70s that result in some of the greatest technological breakthroughs that we enjoy today.
We actually know that our crumbling pipelines, roads, and bridges are ticking time bombs. That is why President Obama and Congressional Democrats have pushed to fund jobs that repair our roads, runways, and railways - we can't have first rate American communities with third-world American infrastructure.
When I say infrastructure it's not just roads and bridges and subways - it's also housing. It's also schools and fire departments and water departments and sewer departments. That's all infrastructure and it's all important. Little by little this country is crumbling and everyone knows it.
We in Germany could, for example, lower taxes. And who is against that? The Social Democrats.
We could also mobilize more private investments for public infrastructure projects liken the construction of highways. But the Social Democrats also reject this, even though they are at times similar to others abroad in their carping about the surplus. Incidentally, some of the consequences of the good economic situation are strong increases in wages, rising pensions and a strong labor market.
Crossrail is a prime example of infrastructure. It is a rather deadly word, but I think it is exciting stuff, the civil engineering which makes Britain tick - the bridges, tunnels, power and water networks, which bind us together.