More Friedman nonsense

Thomas Friedman wrote an especially irritating column last week that has lingered in my mind ever since I left for vacation. The piece is based largely on an anecdote in which Friedman describes his experience jet setting from a conference in Hong Kong back to the U.S.:

[My day] actually started well, on Kau Sai Chau, an island off Hong Kong, where I stood on a rocky hilltop overlooking the South China Sea and talked to my wife back in Maryland, static-free, using a friend’s Chinese cellphone. A few hours later, I took off from Hong Kong’s ultramodern airport after riding out there from downtown on a sleek high-speed train — with wireless connectivity that was so good I was able to surf the Web the whole way on my laptop.

Landing at Kennedy Airport from Hong Kong was, as I’ve argued before, like going from the Jetsons to the Flintstones. The ugly, low-ceilinged arrival hall was cramped, and using a luggage cart cost $3. (Couldn’t we at least supply foreign visitors with a free luggage cart, like other major airports in the world?) As I looked around at this dingy room, it reminded of somewhere I had been before. Then I remembered: It was the luggage hall in the old Hong Kong Kai Tak Airport. It closed in 1998.

The next day I went to Penn Station, where the escalators down to the tracks are so narrow that they seem to have been designed before suitcases were invented. The disgusting track-side platforms apparently have not been cleaned since World War II. I took the Acela, America’s sorry excuse for a bullet train, from New York to Washington. Along the way, I tried to use my cellphone to conduct an interview and my conversation was interrupted by three dropped calls within one 15-minute span.

Wielding this as nearly the sum total of his evidence, he then calls for what amounts to an overhaul of America:

We don’t just need a bailout. We need a reboot. We need a build out. We need a buildup. We need a national makeover. That is why the next few months are among the most important in U.S. history. Because of the financial crisis, Barack Obama has the bipartisan support to spend $1 trillion in stimulus. But we must make certain that every bailout dollar, which we’re borrowing from our kids’ future, is spent wisely.

It has to go into training teachers, educating scientists and engineers, paying for research and building the most productivity-enhancing infrastructure — without building white elephants. Generally, I’d like to see fewer government dollars shoveled out and more creative tax incentives to stimulate the private sector to catalyze new industries and new markets. If we allow this money to be spent on pork, it will be the end of us.

Friedman, in effect, is at least tacitly endorsing government expenditures of $1 trillion all because he had a bad day traveling. Friedman's experience, however, is more a commentary on the state of the New York/New Jersey Port Authority which operates JFK (which I can attest is in rather sad shape having passed through there last summer, although in fairness jetBlue recently opened a new terminal) and government-owned Amtrak.

After all, if we're going to base public policy on anecdotes then I could describe my own trip from Colorado to DC today. I took a car from outside Colorado Springs to Denver, using a toll road that made the 80 mile trip take just over an hour. Once there I was able to check in, pass security and then take the airport train to the B concourse with little problem. My flight arrived in Baltimore 25 minutes early and from there I took a bus to a metro station back to DC. The bus wait was under 5 minutes while there was no wait for the metro train.

Does that then mean that the U.S. has a first-class infrastructure in all respects? Not at all, but this is just as intellectually rigorous as what Friedman has offered up.

He then uses this as the basis for a course of action that is rooted in what can be charitably described as extreme naiveté. He calls for vast new expenditures but stresses that it must not be spent on wasteful projects -- as though such exhortations would make any kind of difference. What the Times columnist fails to grasp is that pork barrel spending and political considerations in government expenditures are an inherent part of the process. The notion that an army of technocrats can allocate taxpayer resources in a scientific fashion devoid of any outside influence is sheer fantasy.

This is compounded by his call for tax incentives to serve as a catalyst for the development of new industries -- as though the tax code is somehow free from the meddling of lobbyists. Also ignored is the fact that if tax incentives or other forms of government aid are required to make an industry viable that it is probably an industry that doesn't deserve to exist, much less constitute the wave of the future.

It's really an enduring mystery to me why this guy gets paid speaking fees upwards of $50K. A case of market failure?