Tanya Snyder wonders if it really makes sense to be touting the short-term employment impact of investing in transportation infrastructure. After all, the real benefit here is that over the long term better infrastructure leads to more growth and higher quality of life.

I think that’s right, but I do think the jobs point is relevant. After all, any time someone comes along with a proposal to build a train line or repair a bridge someone is going to be concerned that the project is wasteful. At this point, you have to ask yourself what, exactly, is it that we might be wasting. “Money” is often the answer you get, but while individual government agencies do have fixed budget constraints, the United States as a whole is at no risk of running out of dollars. The thing that might be wasteful about increased transportation infrastructure investments is real resources. Human labor, steel, concrete, building equipment. These are things that could be used on some government-funded pet project, or could be used on projects that the private market has deemed to be sound investments. But how much we worry about this ought to be in large part a function of how many idle resources we have. In October of 2000, the unemployment rate was 4 percent and the employment:population ratio was the highest it had ever been in American history. Under those circumstances, before you pull real resources out of the private sector you want to be very sure you’re doing something worthwhile. When it’s June 2003 and the unemployment rate is 6.2 percent you’re looking at a very different situation. And when it’s May 2011 and the unemployment rate has been consistently over 9 percent for two years then you’re looking at a very different situation. The United States is not running short on construction workers. Useful projects are, as always, better than useless ones but with this quantity of idle real resources the bar something needs to cross to be worth doing is extremely low.

I’m once again struck by the extent to which legal regimes embed the notion that sameness, as such, is a value worth preserving. Here’s Kelly Matlock reporting on a proposed development that would replace a vacant lot that’s inside a historic district:

In her testimony to the HPRB yesterday, Green stated, “The Takoma Central District Plan specifically addresses height. It states that ‘new commercial and residential buildings should be no more than 2-4 stories in height to match existing residential scale’ and to preserve Takoma’s ‘small/town village character’.”

She continued by saying that, “The Takoma Overlay District permits heights of up to 55 feet, but as I also understand it, you have the ability to reduce the height, as needed, on case-by-case basis.”

Note, again, that we’re not talking about knocking down a historic structure and replacing it with a new one. We’re talking about replacing a vacant lot. Yes, it’s a vacant lot in a historic district. But it’s a vacant lot. And we’re being urged by members of the community to restrict the size of the new development—a move that has citywide implications for housing affordability, the tax base, etc.—in order “to match existing residential scale.” Obviously, though, no neighborhood as it currently exists could have been built if not for the fact that at some point in the past new structures weren’t erected that failed to match what existed previously. And it’s not at all clear to me why we would think it’s the case that, as a rule, conformity is an important aesthetic value that needs to be balanced against other economic and environmental considerations. If someone was objecting to a proposed new building on the grounds that it’s ugly well then that would make perfect sense. Nobody wants to see something they think is ugly go up across the street. But the problem with the new building is just that it’s not the same as other buildings nearby? Who cares?

— Transformers 3: Clearly the best of the Transformers films, but if invading alien robots are using Chicago as a base from which to destroy the entire planet I think the appropriate response is going to be a nuclear strike on Chicago. That said, I was impressed by Michael Bay’s vision of Washington, DC as a city full of skyscrapers and tall buildings with sufficient housing supply that a young couple can afford an awesome duplex loft. Well done.

— Midnight in Paris: Maybe it’s just me, but I found myself persistently irritated by the fact that nobody has a cell phone. Maybe that’s because they’re all Verizon customers or have turned their international data roaming off, but even so for years now when I’ve traveled abroad there’s frequent discussion from the suddenly device-less about how disconcerting this is. On the other hand, it’s a movie about nostalgia so….

The NYT has a bunch of interesting charts on this. But suffice it to say that high-level managers appear to have become much more skilled at directed value into their own pockets:

What I always wish I could see more of were direct international comparisons. Not only do high-paid oil and gas CEOs all get paid roughly similar amounts of money despite drastically different performances, but running a large American oil company is much more lucrative than running the giant French oil company. Anglophone firms just pay CEOs much more than continental European firms or Japanese firms. Meanwhile, though pretty much all firms are happy to discover and apply some new methods to hold down labor costs you rarely if ever see a firm bragging about its success in reducing executive compensation.

Mexico is a somewhat above-average country in terms of per capita GDP, but that average figure masks huge disparities. When I went to southern Mexico last December it was clear that outside of the central city of Oaxaca you were looking at a very poor area dominated by low-productivity agricultural activities and traditional crafts. But as an interesting Guardian piece observes, there’s a tension between aspirations for development and aspirations for cultural integrity and preservation:

Elena Gonzales folds yarn between her fingers. Her tapestry is woven in an intricate pattern of ochre and indigo, with fibre that has been dyed using moss and bark, fruit and flowers. Here in the hills of Oaxaca, in southern Mexico, indigenous Zapotec communities have been weaving rugs for more than two thousand years. Elena spins the loom and the centuries fall away.

Like many Zapotec children growing up in the 1980s, Elena did not attend school. Faced with a primary curriculum that took no account of Zapotec language or culture, her parents decided that she should be educated by her community. She was taught to weave by her grandmother. Self-sufficiency is the historic norm in Oaxaca, but in recent decades as rural life has become increasingly entretejidos – interwoven – with the modern market economy, Zapotec children who have not gone to school are finding themselves on the wrong side of an urban-rural education divide that excludes them from employment and contributes to deepening poverty.

Obviously, the dilemma here is real. Not only does formal education improve one’s earning potential, so does better transportation and communications connections to the outside world. And Spanish-language competence has a higher market value than Zapotec-language competence. So insofar as you put an overwhelming premium on cultural preservation, the tendency will be for that agenda to entrench poverty. After all, the authentic cultural tradition of indigenous peoples in southern Mexico involves being poor. That said, we do see in Denmark, the Netherlands, Flanders, Sweden, etc. that it’s actually quite possible for a country to become very much a part of the global economy while still retain a distinct language community.

[UPDATE]: Apologies, I neglected a hat tip to Erik Loomis who’s decided to “disagree” with me in a very nasty way despite the fact that it’s not clear what we’re supposed to be disagreeing about here.