Biden's Infrastructure and Jobs Act Likely to Spark Economic Boom

I’m writing a new book, working title: My Summer as Suicide Saunders, Auto Daredevil. The story takes place in the 1950s, and so my research requires authentically recreating that decade as a backdrop. My research has been a reminder that current reality is a poor predictor of future events. 

The Impact of the National Defense Highway Act

I’m thinking particularly of President Eisenhower’s 1956 National Defense Highway Act which created the Interstate Highway System and regional roads, at the time the largest public works project in U.S. history. Congress justified the expense for its potential to move troops and war materials more quickly and to provide safer travel for motorists. 

The program accomplished that, and so much more that was hardly foreseen.

With those high-speed roads came high speed truck commerce. Products could be manufactured and delivered faster and cheaper than ever before. It wasn’t long after the first highways were completed that Sam Walton opened his first store in Arkansas and his Wal-Marts and other big box retail chains revolutionized rural American commerce. 

Manufacturing could be easily moved to non-unionized southern states, and even overseas, prompting a mass migration of people and jobs, profoundly changing U.S. politics.  

The roads were available for passenger travel, too, and those passengers needed places to sleep and eat. Cue the Holiday Inns and McDonald’s and all their competitors. Franchising of all types became ubiquitous. Tourism became a major industry.

Many of the new highways skirted their destination cities, opening up inexpensive land development that we now call suburbia, and all of the social and cultural changes that came with it.

More cars propelled growth of the oil and gas industries and their automobile support systems. Conversely, rail transportation withered and so did urban mass transit.

Parallels with the Infrastructure and Jobs Act

That history is worth recalling because a similar defining foundation is being created right now, virtually unnoticed by the general public. President Biden signed the Infrastructure and Jobs Act in November, 2021, less than a year after he entered the White House. It’s the most consequential public works project since the original highway act. Even more consequential, since it will impact more than roads and bridges.

Airports, seaports, public transit, railroads, the nation’s electric grid, waterways and water systems, broadband access, a national network of EV chargers, environmental cleanup, climate change protection, and more.

Much of that work is just getting underway. As with the original highway system, the impact almost surely will go beyond its immediate obvious goals. Nearly every day now, new contracts are being announced, equipment is turning earth, things are being built in unexpected places, more people are being hired and trained. 

President Eisenhower’s National Defense Highway Act wasn’t the only reason for the massive economic growth in the 1950s and 1960s, but it was undeniably a major contributor. We can reasonably assume that President Biden’s Infrastructure and Jobs Act will have a similar, if not more profound effect on our economic, social and political life in the years to come.

While that’s for history to evaluate, there’s no reason why the story cannot be forcefully  told now to bring the significance of the President Biden’s achievement out of the media shadows.

Did you receive It’s Always Something from a friend? Subscribe for yourself. It’s free.

Comments? Criticism? Contact Joe Rothstein at jrothstein@rothstein.net