2/2: Redistributing tax dollars: State funding for the public good? @RichardAEpstein @HooverInst
The John Batchelor Show
John Batchelor
4.5 • 2.8K Ratings
🗓️ 30 November 2023
⏱️ 10 minutes
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Summary
#Bestof2021: 2/2: Redistributing tax dollars: State funding for the public good? @RichardAEpstein @HooverInst
https://www.hoover.org/research/infrastructure-distortions
The impending multibillion-dollar infrastructure deal between the Biden administration and the Senate Republicans has been hailed as welcome bipartisan cooperation that augurs well for the revitalization of this nation’s aging infrastructure—and for improving the lives of many Americans. This narrative plays so well because the term “infrastructure” now carries a seal of approval. Private expenditures may be suspect as greedy, but not public expenditures.
1850 Rome
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| 0:00.0 | Oh great! The Guardian is now delivering newspapers all over the UK to places like Manchester, Edinburgh and many more. |
| 0:06.7 | But what about us dogs? More visits from that pesky postman? |
| 0:10.0 | And look at my parents, totally preoccupied. Up to 25% offer home delivery subscription for them, |
| 0:15.3 | but no belly rubs for me. |
| 0:16.8 | Check whether your area is eligible today and subscribe when you visit the Guardian. |
| 0:20.8 | Com slash autumn delivery. |
| 0:22.0 | offer ends December 3rd, 2023. Open to UK and N.I. Guardian. This is |
| 0:40.0 | the B.S. I in the world. I'm John Bachelor and Professor Richard Epstein of the The Hoover Institution, teaches law at NYU and the University of Chicago is here doing me the great |
| 0:44.3 | favor of traveling in time from Londinium 90 AD where Rome was all powerful but who's |
| 0:51.8 | going to fix the bridge? The Thames flooded again to 2021 |
| 0:56.8 | where the United States of America for argument sake is all powerful and we now |
| 1:02.4 | debate infrastructure. What Julius Caesar would do |
| 1:05.2 | if asked to make up the difference in shortfall for public education is that he |
| 1:09.8 | would borrow a great deal of money never actually thinking he had to repay it. He would |
| 1:14.3 | hold games everybody would celebrate him and then the schools would fix |
| 1:18.4 | themselves. That was Caesar's approach. Well we don't use that anymore, I think. |
| 1:23.0 | Professor, you make the very wonderful argument that the word infrastructure is itself a bridge between |
| 1:29.1 | classical liberal thinking about the responsibilities of the state and private enterprise and the |
| 1:34.6 | progressives. How does it connect these two and is it good that it connects them? |
| 1:38.3 | Well actually it's extremely dangerous. One of the things that you discover is that the progressive |
| 1:44.2 | movement has always tried to capitalize on a vocabulary that was first developed by |
| 1:49.6 | a classical liberal. So for example the classical liberal believes that |
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