Aliens built the TTC

[sabotabby]

I had brunch with a friend I hadn't seen in a long time, and we were talking (of course) politics and the pervasiveness of the "but how we will pay for it???" ideology. (I agree that it's a question worth asking—it's just usually asked as a rhetorical question to shut down debate, when it is actually a question that has an answer.) Basically, the idea that one invests in social good and infrastructure has been in rapid decline since the 80s. You couldn't build a subway system now—witness the Scarborough One Stop Wonder. People would get deadlocked wondering how to pay for it, rather than considering it an essential civic investment and just getting the thing done.

I compared it to when you see white people talking about the pyramids. Like, how did they have the technology back then? How did they figure it out? What a mystery! Must have been aliens!

Now we're existing in the ruins of a mightier civilization. Waiting for the subway (well, haha, not this weekend). Wondering, I can only suppose: How did they build this wonder? What kind of marvellous technology did the ancients of the 1960s have? How did they pay for it???

Comments

[kore]

It's a particularly baffling question given that taxpayers rarely paid for a setup of a whole lot of public institutions, like, say, public libraries. But now it's like "You'll be taking MY money!" when in reality it was the very rich who didn't mind funding stuff like museums or hospitals or giant research medical centers (Gates doesn't even come close in that regard). Like usual it's the behaviour of the very rich that drives a lot of public life. And also of course a constant demonizing of ANY kind of 'socialism' (COMMUNISM), i.e. we're all in this together, vaccinate your kid for herd immunity, public infrastructures are good even if you own a car, and the concurrent glorifying of "screw you Jack I've got mine" (someday when you've got about three hours just ask me what Tim Eyman did to the infrastructure of Seattle, go on, just ask me, just make sure you have booze on hand).

-- Moi, channeling her dad circa about 1993

[sabotabby]

AND YOU ARE/WERE BOTH CORRECT

[kore]

//SPIRIT OF MY DAD WOULD BE BOTH AMUSED AND PROUD I THINK

[kore]

Also I truly don't think you could get something like the New Deal/SSI anywhere near to launch these days, I just don't. Not that it was a cakewalk in the thirties, but just look at the decades-long bloody bitter struggle it has been to try to get some not-rich US citizens halfway decent healthcare that still is not that affordable and often undertreats people.

(sorry to be so US centric but that is the system I know....)

[sabotabby]

If we hadn't done Medicare in the 50s and 60s, it would never have happened now.