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The US just passed a $1.2 trillion infrastructure bill a few years ago for those schools and roads that are "falling apart" on top of the ~$125 billion spent annually on transportation and education at the federal level. States and local government pay another ~$700 billion per year for education and ~$350 billion per year on transportation.
Genuine question, where does this money go? Nothing is improving. People are still in a lot of college debt, college fees are not getting any cheaper, kids still aren't getting free meals in schools, roads still look like shit all over the country, transportation is still absolute garbage, and don't get me started on our healthcare system. Again, where does that money go? I really would love to know, not trying to argue, I just want to know.
The really funny thing is that these are almost entirely domestic sectors.
Like, seriously, investing in healthcare, infrastructure, education…these should be no-brainers. Every single dollar invested into these gets spent multiple times within American borders, through American businesses and American laborers, and has real tangible returns like “a well educated workforce (and education==higher income==higher income taxes; and also more spend on sales taxes, real estate taxes, interest, etc)” and “healthy living people” and “transporting goods and services for sale”.
But you're talking about good things. Good things means better society. Better society means more power to people which means our lords the billionaires class won't have as much control over people to syphon more profit out of them. If you have not heard of the channel "second though", I'd highly recommend you watch some of his videos. He's not perfect, but he does have some good topics. One of them is this about why a lot of people are poor.
What state are you in?
Genuine question, where does this money go? Nothing is improving.
This is such an obviously untrue statement. Come on. Nothing is improving? I'm sure that it varies wildly by state and who's running the state, but in my state it seems like there's constantly roads, highways, bridges, etc being repaved, rebuilt, rerouted, or otherwise improved in some way. I've seen a few new schools pop up in my town and they've been working on renovating some of the older ones.
Student loans, school lunches, public transportation, and healthcare are outside the scope of the original post that I was addressing.
I don't know what bubble you live in, but it certainly sounds good. I'll just move next to you to get some of that American dream y'all got there 😂
What state are you in?
Oregon
Great. That's about 5 trillion less than we need. The US Army Corps of Engineers estimates we need 3 trillion just for emergency repair projects.
Source?
https://www.cnn.com/2021/03/30/politics/infrastructure-us-investment-cost-engineers/index.html
My memory turned 2.6 into 3. But yeah, we're not even keeping up maintenance.
In fairness, if you ask people of basically any industry whether their industry needs more money, they will always say yes. Teachers will always say we're not spending enough on education, police will always say we're not spending enough on police, business owners will always say we're not spending enough on them, etc.
And yet teachers have to buy school supplies out of their own pay, and we have news footage of collapsing infrastructure.
Teachers shouldn't have to do that.
No they shouldn't. My point is some of these industries really do need more funding.
That seems like a total bullshit number. The closest thing I can find is from 2021 where a report from the Congressional Research Service mentioned a $109 billion project backlog for the Army Corps of Engineers.
https://crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/IF/IF11945/2
Edit:
OP confused "Army Corps of Engineers" and "American Society of Civil Engineers". He also exaggerated the bit about "emergency repairs" and neglected to mention that the $3 trillion figure was for spending over the course of a decade.
https://www.cnn.com/2021/03/30/politics/infrastructure-us-investment-cost-engineers/index.html
Then you didn't look very hard.
The price tag to bring it into good repair? Nearly $2.6 trillion over 10 years, according to the American Society of Civil Engineers
That's the "American Society of Civil Engineers", not the "US Army Corps of Engineers" like your original comment said. It's also not "emergency repairs". $2.6 trillion is the amount that needs to be paid for over the next 10 years to keep things in "good repair". The $1.2 trillion takes us a little less than halfway there. Toss in the federal and local budgets for transportation and that's another $4 trillion over the next 10 years. More than likely more money will be made available in the next decade for additional projects.
The budget was for a decade of spending. That's how it got to be over a trillion dollars in the first place. Depending on future appropriations that may or may not occur isn't policy, it's just wishing.
And yeah my memory was a little fuzzy. But it's not exactly painting a rosy picture.