Quote:
Originally posted by island911
Word!
Here we have a State (WA) which is running a huge surplus yet imposes an "emergency "gas tax measure. (gas is now cheaper in Hawaii btw)
Super, take a trip to Texas ...you'll see Big infrastructure. . . and they seem to build the big stuff with ease. Here, however, roads and bridge projects are closer, in implementation, to Boston's "Big Dig" -- that is, politicians seem more interested in spending (taxing) Big Bucks, and using the project for political positioning, rather than for achieving a smart outcome for the taxpayers.
Btw, the city of Seattle has a clear plan to slow & limit traffic...unless its owned by, and controlled by, the gubiment .
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Quite a smattering of subjective and unsupported innuendo. Here is a link to a study which divides states into high wage and low wage states. In other words, Northern states and Southern states. TX is in the low wage category and was included in this study. Washington State was in the study also, as a high wage state. As it turns out, the total cost per mile of building highways was inversely proportional to the hourly wage cost. Nearly twice as many labor hours are needed for low wage highway building, compared to high wage highway building. Which makes sense. Quite frankly, one thing that labor folks know about the New Orleans problem that others may not, is that the reconstruction problem there will not be addressed by local (Louisiana) labor. Ten NO construction workers are more expensive, and less productive, than one travelling high wage journeyman from the North. New Orleans knows that in order to rebuild, it will need to import constrution labor. Among insiders, that is a widely recognized brute fact.
Oops. Here's the link:
http://www.faircontracting.org/NAFCnewsite/prevailingwage/new/wagesproductivity.pdf