为什么美国不像中国那样投资基建和其他大型项目？ [美国媒体]

Why isn’t the United States investing in infrastructure and other large scale projects like China?

为什么美国不像中国那样投资基建和其他大型项目？



Johannes Sulistyo, Has been an enthusiast since 1990
Answered Nov 7
There are too many reasons why.
It is already “over-developed”
Look at transport facilities in NYC:
List of airports in New York - Wikipedia
You can just look at how many airports are there in the NYC alone.
And then the interstates, something that China tries to copy in their blueprint. This much has been completed in 1974.
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有很多原因。美国在基建上其实已经过度开发，看看纽约的交通设施，纽约的机场名单，单单纽约就有这么多机场。还有州际公路，这是中国试图模仿的。而美国在1974年就已经建成。

And by 1980, the whole infrastructure spans for 42,500 miles. Today, it is 48,000 miles long.
China, being a much larger country with 3 times the population, built a much bigger network of 85,000 miles of road by 2016.
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wik...
But those includes regional highways too.
What if we include intercities and other numbered highways in USA?
Surprise, surprise:
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wik...
157,724 miles long, still almost twice the total length of those Chinese ones.
Many of those roads leads to nowhere, and it brings us to the second point:
Government Employment Programs and Corporate Lobbying Interests Align

到1980年，整个基建跨越了42500英里，如今达到了48000英里。中国拥有美国三倍的人口，到2016年已经建成85000英里的高速公路。但是这些包括了区域的高速公路。但是如果包括城际和其他编号的高速公路呢，美国有多少？157724英里，几乎是中国的两倍。其中很多道路通往不毛之地，这就要谈到第二点了：就业项目和企业游说利益结盟

Infrastructure projects are populist policy. It employs a lot of people in a massive scale. It increases spending, thus “artificially stimulates” the economy. It is also supposed to be a catalyst for growth: facilities to allow for more business activities (trickle down effects).
The thing is: it is usually poorly planned and meant to stave off political and social problems, manipulate jobless figure, and win instant popularity with the benefactors.

基建项目是民粹政策。它能让大量人口就业。也能增加开销，从而人为的刺激经济。它也是增长的催化剂，促进更多商业活动的展开（涓滴效应）。问题是通常没有得到良好规划，只是为了延缓政治和社会问题，操纵失业人口，并赢得捐助人的青睐。

Doing massive projects like this also aligns with the interests of specific industry lobbyist. For example: American Highway Users Alliance - Wikipedia
For good or bad, massive grandeur infrastructure projects are too often politicised. Large scale projects like the one carried in China are quite often grandiose in nature, to produce poetic speeches in line with “a thousand years reich” speech.
It created this kind of excess:
How China’s rush to urbanise has created a slew of ghost towns
It even has its own Wikipedia page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Un...
Slowly but sure, they are filling in, but not without flipsides.
China's Largest Ghost City Is Now Almost Completely Full - But There's A Twist

大规模项目的进行也会和产业游说者的利益相结合。无论如何，大规模基建项目通常都被政治化。像中国的大规模项目本质上是好大喜功的，是为了产生诗意的叙事，以对应“千年帝国”的印象。所以中国的城市化就产生了一系列的鬼城。虽然这些鬼城渐渐有人搬进去住，但是总是有反面影响。


Joseph Wang, studied at Ph.D Astronomy UT Austin, Physics MIT
Answered Nov 4
tl:dr - Chinese government has been building stuff for 5000 years. That’s why it exists :-) :-)
So….
The big reason is that although China has capitalist elements, there is a belief by most Chinese that “big government is good.” So when the government spends trillions of USD on massive projects, the society thinks this is a good thing.
In the US, there is the general social belief that “big government is bad” so you can’t convince people to spend massive amounts of money in infrastructure.

中国建设的历史已经有5000年之久。这是中国存在的原因所在。很大的一个原因是虽然中国有资本主义元素，但是大部分中国人认为是好的。所以当投资万亿美元在巨型项目上时，整个社会都认为这是好事。
在美国，社会上的普遍看法是“大政府是不好的”，所以你无法说服人们花大钱在基建上。

Let’s ask a simple question, why does the Chinese government exist?
Well if you talk about Chinese legends……
Great Flood (China) - Wikipedia
So China has a legend similar to Noah’s Ark, but rather than building an Ark, the Great Emperor Yu built a network of dikes and canals to drain the flood, and started the Xia Dynasty. And since then the Chinese government has been building stuff. Dikes and canals in 2000 BC. High speed rail and freeways today.

一个简单的问题，为什么中国会存在？这可以追溯到中国的传说——大禹治水。所以中国有一个类似于诺亚方舟的传说，但是中国人没有去建造方舟，大禹皇帝建造了一个堤坝和运河网络来排洪，从而开启了夏朝。自那以后中国就开始搞建设。公元前2000年的堤坝和运河，今天的高铁和高速公路。

Now if you have American’s talk about the founding of the United States. It’s all about people escaping oppression, and the evil taxes of King George III, and to settle the West with hard work and no government interference.
This are all legends, and you might correctly say that all of this is historically dubious, but the legends of the past tell you how people think today.

而美国是怎么建国的，是人们逃脱镇压，是乔治国王三世的重税，是人们努力打拼在西部定居，是没有政府的干涉。你可以说中国的那个是传说，很可疑，但是过去的传说可以说明现今的人们是怎么思考的。

Anonymous
Answered Nov 7
Because there is less need to do so. China is playing a catching-up game nowadays while the US is ahead. The US has long been past the stage when it had to invest in infrastructure like crazy. It happened in the late 19th century and early 20th century. Much of the US railways, reservoirs, etc are from that era. After WW II, the US also built freeway network (it was a relatively new technology at that time). Much of Western Europe also had their build-infrastructure-like-crazy days from the mid 19th century to the early 20th century (the UK had it earlier, though).

因为美国没有这么做的必要。中国是在追赶，美国现在还是领先的。美国早就过了疯狂基建的时代，那是在19世纪末和20世纪初的时候。美国的很多铁路和水库都是那个时候建设的。二战后，美国也建设了高速公路网络（在当时这是相对新的技术）。欧洲大部分地区也是从19世纪中期到20世纪初期期间进行疯狂的基建（英国更早）。

Americans may sneer at the American infrastructure. What they don’t realize is that American infrastructure is not a joke. Infrastructure in less prosperous parts of China is much worse than it is in the poorer parts of the USA. The smallest towns in the USA are still connected to the rest of the USA by a decent road network; water, electricity, and internet are also available. New York or Chicago subways may look like ancient (and dirty) relics as compared to Shanghai or Beijing subways. However, New York and Chicago subways do carry millions of people reliably and efficiently. China is investing heavily on infrastructure because not so long time ago its infrastructure was extremely bad.

美国人或许会嘲笑美国的基建。但是他们没有意识到美国基建并不是一个笑话。中国不那么繁荣的地方的基建比美国不那么繁荣的地方的基建差很多。美国最小的城镇都有很好的道路同全美相连；水电因特网统统有。和北京上海地铁相比，纽约和芝加哥地铁看起来或许很古老和脏。然而，纽约和芝加哥地铁照样高效可靠运营着。中国之所以在基建上投资这么多，那是因为就在不久前他们的基建是那么的糟糕。

Healthy amount of infrastructure investment (along with maintenance) is necessary. However, if the US were spending infrastructure money like China, it would be waste of money.

一定数量的基建投资和维护是必要的。然而，如果美国像中国那样投资基建，那将是浪费钱。