Of course I should have said that “government as an institution isn’t to blame”.

The current government and its policies are to blame, sure. But government as a system isn’t the issue, surely it can’t be if elected officials in other nations find ways to publicly fund and oversee massive metro systems.

The goal now becomes to reform our governments policies to make it work better and cut out middle men.

Part of that process is having internal staff, based on the article. That will mean attracting talent to work for government agencies themselves, which means having competitive salaries for them.

Whenever I'm in a bad mood or having a bad day, I come to this sub to read comments and leave feeling better because as bad as my day was, I'm still not as miserable as the users here who find a reason to hate any and everything possible, and complain about all of it.

They should have done it in French order, "Parkway Jackie Robinson," then they'd have had room for the C.

If I was king for a day I’d audit them into oblivion and rebuild the corp from scratch, I’m with you

When I was growing up there, people used to cut their tails off for Santeria stuff. You’ll also find headless chickens l, pig heads etc

By definition the government itself is to blame. Who else spends the money??

It’s not like it’s stolen at gunpoint by the consultants. The whole institution is corrupt and they knowingly pay way above market rates for everything. It’s not their money so they don’t care. Been that way for years now and nothing is going to change that without drastic action. Whether it’s privatization or a complete federal takeover who knows.

Feds shouldn't have to. Figure out how to be sustainable.

Well neither political party does and I question the economic benefit and short sightedness of reducing spending on infrastructure as it has tremendous long term returns. Building roads and bridges has been a core part of successful governments that predates the Romans.

So what’s the solution then? Because what will happen is that without attracting top talent, government will just be completely unable to do anything. Roads will be terrible, subways will be terrible, and we will all complain about it. Yet we don’t want to fund programs to fix it.

You’ve effectively implemented societal purgatory.

what do you have against the public sector and civil service?

Really? Because E4s are only entry level if they enlist with a degree. E2 is typically after high school. And nearly half of the E4s I had in my units had families with children. It’s just a reality man.

Not at all.

Things cost money. That’s a fact. We can expect something like a massive subway system to cost a lot of money.

What’s frustrating is that in other relatively comparable cities, governments have implemented transit systems that cost less money. Clearly then, government is capable of doing this.

A main issue is that with our reliance on contractors and not funding internal agency staff properly, projects become bloated and costly and we say “what are we paying the MTA so much for!” That’s a fair question, but doesn’t mean that government itself is to blame, especially if private contractors are running up cost. The blame lies at how the government is staffed and how it goes about it’s business.

Again, as seen elsewhere, governments are able to make this work.

No one wants to pay for good work anymore.

Yeah sorry but that things probably been traded a couple times by now

The biddings aren’t competitive. The agencies are corrupt and they don’t care because they’re spending other people’s money.

E4 pay is for the bottom barrel high school grad who is also getting fed and housed.

No

And again, I am unwilling to pay for 300k programmers with my tax dollars. Already annoyed about 100k police officers.

Would be fine with less aid going to rural areas too.

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I still call the Ed Koch the 59th street bridge and that was two names ago.

https://usafacts.org/state-of-the-union/transportation-infrastructure/

Because the Federal government provides funding for that and it has bi-partisan support. Probably not the hill Republicans want to die on as that aid disproportionately goes to rural areas when you account for where the tax money comes from. Your question should really be why are your federal taxes paying for bridges and roads in rural Arkansas.

Neither political party wants the type of policy you seem to want.

“small government” is when the MTA spends $23 billion a year and you live in the highest taxed city in the entire country. Lol give me a break. You guys are losing it. Bending over backwards to blame capitalism or some other thing instead of just admitting government agencies are run by idiots in the first place. Somehow we have more funding than maybe any city in the entire world but get horrible service.

Seriously. I would be like, “No, please just plant a tree in my name.”

""Ed Koch"" ""Van Wyck"" ""Verrazano"" 🤮