Labour and Democrat politicians of those days actually had dirt under their fingernails. However many years they’d been in Parliament they’d started life doing practical work: even if it was just building a garden shed they’d done it at an early age and thus intuitively understood the gap between theory and reality. Nowadays the ranks of the Left-Wing parties are filled with those who don’t understand that gap and are all theory.

The six years of the most recent Labour and Labour-led governments was an unending tale of failure at actually building stuff. Standout failures were Kiwibuild, Renewable Power, Auckland Light Rail, and The Interislander Ferry

Billions of dollars pissed away with nothing to show for it but a bunch of reports and plans, mostly drawn up by private sector consultants who made a pretty penny (CONFESSION TIME: I used to be one of them and made out like a bandit during the Clarke/Cullen regime). The wastage was so fantastic that it stunned the imagination: most people could not and still cannot see how it could have happened.

Well, the answer to the Ardern Labour government is the Biden Administration saying “hold my beer” as they celebrated the passage of a $US 1.2 Trillion “Infrastructure Bill” a couple of years ago:

That’s just the start of a tale of woe, stupidity and incompetence:

Two and a half years after Congress ratified the $1.2 trillion Bipartisan Infrastructure Law in November of 2021, there has been very little concrete progress on new roads or bridges. The trillions of federal dollars the Biden administration has poured into the economy may actually be hindering the completion of the infrastructure that Biden promised to build, analysts told the Caller.

“Right now, the inputs cost 31 percent more than they did in January 2021,”
…
[O]f the 10 bridge and highway projects with the most money allocated from the bill, only one — the $1.6 billion Penn Station Access project — has broken ground on major construction.

There were another 56,000 traditional infrastructure projects that had $454 billion attached to them, but they are apparently at the same stage, or earlier, as those ten, since the Biden Administration can find nothing literally concrete to boast about.

Hang on, you may say, that means there’s about $750 billion allocated to infrastructure that’s not roads, bridges, dams and all that good stuff that was discussed. What’s that being spent on? That’s a good question that I looked at back in August 2021 as The Stupid Party (the Republicans) voted for this boondoggle:

  • Tens of billions to throw around at carbon capture, hydrogen, electric flying taxis, buses and high-speed mass-transit hyperloop. 
  • $73 billion for transmission lines and batteries to back up heavily subsidized wind and solar power.
  • $40 billion to build out broadband in “underserved” areas. 
  • $66 billion for rail, $30 billion of which is earmarked for Amtrak’s northeast corridor—a subsidy for political commuters.
  • $20 billion for projects that “advance racial equity and environmental justice.”
  • $100 billion investment in public schools, including funding for school lunches.
  • $174 billion investment in electric vehicles. 

That’s just some of the money parceled out to Green projects and individual states and cities, mainly where Democrats rule. Is it it any wonder that there is so little to show for it? How much was just swallowed by corruption, aside from red-tape delays, general bureaucracy and inflation? And of course this is just a repeat of the the 2009 Obama stimulus package that was sold in part as funding “shovel-ready'” projects, which ended up being a dud due to red tape and delays, frustrating even Obama himself. (“shovel-ready was not as shovel-ready as we expected.”)

In the distant past Labour governments as well as the US Democrats did get big things done with government spending, and whenever you read a Trotter, Bradbury or Leftist politician talking about spending they will refer to those halcyon days. So why are they so useless now in getting things – especially big things – built?

Part of the reason is undoubtedly the gigantic technocracy that governments have to use now to get anything done, the Professional Management Class, as defined by Wellington-based Lefty Danyl Mclauchlan.

But there have always been bureaucrats and bureaucracy and past Labour Ministers like Semple were able to drive them to get things done. The reason was that the Labour and Democrat politicians of those days actually had dirt under their fingernails. However many years they’d been in Parliament they’d started life doing practical work: even if it was just building a garden shed they’d done it at an early age and thus intuitively understood the gap between theory and reality.

Nowadays the ranks of the Left-Wing parties are filled with those who don’t understand that gap and are all theory. Whether the hapless Pete Buttigieg referred to above, who has hopped from paper-pushing consultants like McKinsey to paper-pushing backroom jobs in the US military, or our local versions like Grant Robertson, Chris Hipkins, Megan Woods, Carmel Sepuloni, Phlip Stoner (appropriate) Twyford and of course the Queen Bee of uselessness herself, Jacinda Ardern.

As Ace of Spades put it, how surprised would you be to learn that almost no infrastructure has been built?:

a) Not surprised at all, I am reasonably well-informed.
b) Somewhat surprised, I don’t keep up with the news.
c) Completely surprised — my pronouns are Zey/Zem.
d) What are you talking about? I identify as a marmot and I am part of a polymorphously perverse polycule with various sexual weasels