After Ivanka Trump’s “civilized” testimony yesterday, are we going to give her the excuse of being as dumb as rocks like her brothers? No, let’s just say that her “I don’t recall” to every troublesome question, to even those with documentary or email evidence to suggest that she did know of fraudulent activity, suggests that her feigned ignorance was even more calculated. In a word, she lied, in a predictable and robotic fashion on every question that would have implicated both her father and herself.
But most of us don’t live in a hermetically-sealed world free of lawful, ethical and moral intrusions like The Family Trump. Most of us have to deal with more mundane problems, like dealing with people on the other line. For example, sometimes you can see a train wreck coming a mile away, but you are not so sure the person who is supposed to help you does—being more likely to jump out the way and allow the customer to be run over. A recent “rush order” with Amazon displayed this GPS location of the delivery driver for several hours before I sensed that something was not “right”:
I contacted Amazon “customer service” to find out what was going on with this “rush delivery.” It was supposed to be delivered in Seattle, and the delivery driver instead was spending all his time in another part of the county. It was all to no avail; they “know” no more than what you do, and they can do, well, nothing to "fix" the problem, not even to contact the delivery station so that they can contact the driver. Of course when they do nothing, this happens…
…meaning a phony “delivery attempt” in the wrong city. After some more heated “discussion” the package went out for “redelivery” and then disappeared completely:
The next day after being asked by some smartass with an Indian accent if I expected him to deliver the package, I toned things down and "sweet talked" another CS into "elevating" the call to a “supervisor," who admitted he didn’t have anything to say that I wanted to hear, but then had this “oh wait” revelation, that there was a notification that the package was “lost” and that he would ship a “replacement.” So what was supposed to be a “rush delivery” on Thursday ended-up being a two-day late delivery on Saturday.
But more often, it is the things we know that are fixable but are “out of sight” and thus “out of mind,” like climate change which some people do not think is a problem at all, or things they don’t have the wherewithal to do much about, other than hoping someone else fixes the problem for them. Like, say what that massive infrastructure bill that was passed a few years was supposed to do. The Council of Foreign Affairs tells us that
The $25 trillion U.S. economy relies on a vast network of infrastructure to keep it afloat. But the systems currently in place, including roads, railways, electrical grids, and internet providers, were built decades ago and are struggling to keep pace. Economists say that delays and rising maintenance costs are holding economic performance back, and civil engineers warn that structurally deficient bridges and antiquated water infrastructure pose safety risks. Meanwhile, the United States lags behind other advanced economies in infrastructure quality and spending.
The report points out that most of the country’s major infrastructure systems were designed in the early to mid-1900s. "Many are reaching the end of their lifespan and are dangerously overstretched, experts say,” while “the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE), an industry group, gave the nation’s infrastructure a “C-,” up from a “D+” in 2017—the highest grade in twenty years. Still, the group estimated that there is an ‘infrastructure investment gap’ of nearly $2.6 trillion this decade that, if unaddressed, could cost the United States $10 trillion in lost gross domestic product (GDP) by 2039.”
The report also tells us that “the United States invests less in transportation infrastructure as a percentage of GDP than many other wealthy countries, including France, Germany, Japan, and the United Kingdom. China, meanwhile, spends ten times more than the United States by percentage of GDP.” The U.S. ranks near the bottom of “wealthy” countries in transportation, power grids and water systems.
Now, the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act was supposed to fix some of that. The Council report tells us that $550 billion of it was targeted to “upgrade physical infrastructure such as roads and bridges, railways, airports, and water systems,” and “invests tens of billions of dollars to modernize the U.S. electrical grid, spur the adoption of electric vehicles, and expand broadband internet access.” We are told that as of August 2023, “implementation of the IIJA had already provided more than $280 billion in announced financing for almost seven thousand projects, with at least $120 billion directed toward highways.”
In Seattle, people may have been noticing (some to their annoyance) projects like what originally was to be “adjusting” streets and sidewalks to accommodate new bus routes, but have “grown into a complete overhaul with everything from the city’s sidewalks and intersections to its water and sewer mains being ripped up and replaced along the 2.4-mile route," according to the Public Utilities website. Meanwhile, the Pipeline Improvement Project “will repair and upgrade portions of the large 42-inch diameter steel pipeline that runs four miles from Volunteer Park to Maple Leaf Reservoir in Seattle. The pipeline was built in the early 1900s and is part of the region’s drinking water system.”
But there was another side to the “story.” The Seattle Times informed us a few weeks ago that despite the state being awash with money for infrastructure repair from federal and local sources, there is a critical shortage of civil engineers, and not just in the state. “Opportunities for work are abundant at every level as regional, state and federal governments pour money into new transit lines, highways and bridge rehabilitation. Yet, matching the scale with enough qualified workers is proving difficult. As more contracts hit the open market, fewer people are graduating with civil engineering degrees while thousands more retire each year, contributing to the phenomena of decreased competition and higher prices.”
Yet if projects for infrastructure are not only vital to the state’s growth and health, and are experiencing a funding “boom” and promise work well into the future, college students don’t seem to notice or care, since civil engineering isn’t a “sexy” occupation. “At both the University of Washington and Washington State University, enrollment (in civil engineering degrees) is either flat or declining, a stark contrast to engineering fields focused on robotics or AI that are booming. In an industry already grappling with an engineering bottleneck, the college-level trends portend struggles into the future, threatening to curb the ambitions of an ambitious state.”
I suppose this is the comic book generation, fascinated with a world of CGI make-believe where you can create a world on a computer screen that isn’t real but looks a lot “cooler” than the reality. Roads, rail systems, bridges, airports, water piping, dams, reservoirs, Internet lines and utility poles just are not that interesting. Back in the pre-computer days civil engineering may have been seen as a top-grade occupation, but now it doesn't provide the same "wow" status. Everyone relies on infrastructure to survive, yet no one thinks it is “important” enough for upkeep, and funding infrastructure improvement is largely seen as a way for politicians to sell them as “job creation” programs.
On a national level, the American Society of Civil Engineers tells us that things are so bad that civil engineering companies have to make “difficult decisions” about they can or cannot do, regardless of need. “The problem is clear to many leaders in the architecture, engineering, and construction industry: There simply are not enough engineers to do all the infrastructure work planned or underway in the U.S. This is especially true following the recent influx of hundreds of billions of dollars in federal funding over the next several years from the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act and the Inflation Reduction Act.”
The money to do at least some of what is desperately needed is there, but in a way it has come too late. We can speculate that if the money for infrastructure projects was there decades ago, we wouldn’t have a shortage of civil engineers because there was always work that could be done, and it wouldn’t be regarded a dead-end occupation due its “cyclical” nature. But with money for projects now available, the engineers needed to do the work now are few and far between. Schools of Civil Engineering at UW and WSU have been so desperate to attract students that they’ve had to reschedule “career days” so that there would be less “competition” from other fields in order to promote civil engineering as a viable occupation.
The competition for sparse qualified engineers is only one problem for private construction firms; another is that some engineers are leaving private companies to work in the public sector. The ASCE tells us that “More engineers these days are switching from private sector consulting firms to public sector jobs because the change can result in less travel and fewer hours than the often-longer workweeks and time spent on the road that engineers encounter in consulting work.” This means that even fewer engineers are available to work on projects “out in the country,” preferring to work on local projects that are usually require less work.
Another problem is that civil engineers are demanding higher pay and benefits at a time when clients for infrastructure projects want to keep costs at a “reasonable” level. And the money won’t be around forever, since we saw that unspent money for COVID-19 relief was redirected to pay for the IIJA. According to the ASCE, “civil engineering firms have little time to develop staffing plans. Projects that might previously have allowed them nine months or so to adjust staffing, hire additional people, and otherwise get ready must now get underway in as little as a month after being awarded.”
The desperation of the industry is such that it is now taking some “radical” turns: “One company that generally hires civil engineers with master’s degrees is now willing to consider candidates with just bachelor’s degrees, while another was willing to pay a premium for an applicant with a doctorate because no one with less expensive credentials was available.” Some firms are now examining whether a college degree is even necessary for some positions, deeming “technicians” as qualified to “perform the work previously done by engineers.”
So what does this all mean for
now? The IIJA is creating work—but for those who were already engaged in civil
engineering projects, and now have more work ahead of them. It has proved more
difficult to actually increase the workforce to raise the employment level,
save to keep it stable. In the meantime, the health of the nation’s
infrastructure is like a ticking time bomb like a bridge that looks “fine”
but has critical unseen flaws, or like states like Texas which ignore power
grid problems such as that which left millions without power or heat during the “deep freeze”
of 2021 in which “official estimates” put the death toll at 246; critics of
state Republicans’ refusal to force power and fossil fuel companies to improve
power-generating infrastructure say that little has been to done to safeguard
against another such blackout, because the people running the show are like so many Prince Prosperos high on the hills who think little of the welfare of the multitude in the valleys.
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