A 40" disaster is brewing

On infrastructure spending, low-growth GDP, and the challenge of promoting the general welfare through government

Hurricane Melissa, having already undergone extremely rapid intensification, is rearing up to pummel Jamaica with an unfathomable 20” of rain across nearly the entire island, with some portions of the island potentially in line to get 40” of rain.

■ That’s a rate virtually no infrastructure is (or even can be) built to withstand, and Jamaica simply isn’t equipped with first-rate infrastructure. It’s a country that remains stuck on a low-growth trajectory, and without a sustained period of strong economic growth and subsequent investment (and reinvestment) in the public infrastructure, events like this are going to cause far more death and devastation than they otherwise might.

■ It’s important to remain forever skeptical of government power, but never to grow irrevocably cynical about what good government is uniquely equipped to do. The United States is providing Hurricane Hunter surveillance of the storm, something that NOAA is uniquely equipped to do, both in terms of the physical equipment required and the skilled technical teams able and willing to commit the effort. The Hurricane Hunter team is literally one of a kind.

■ And yet those American Hurricane Hunters aren’t being paid right now due to the Federal government shutdown. Imagine flying into a hurricane in order to save the lives of others, knowing only that you have a reasonable expectation (but no guarantee) that you’ll receive back pay for the job. That’s its own kind of failure -- the machinery of government hasn’t failed, but the administration of law over that machinery has. Planes are in the air, but paychecks aren’t being printed.

■ The idea that government can solve every problem is a mirage. But it’s also a mistake to think that it cannot be used, carefully and in limited fashion, to enhance the quality of life -- to promote the general welfare, in the words of the Constitution. Modesty and self-control are needed anytime a government is established among people; cynicism and a burn-it-all-down ethos are not.

[From the National Hurricane Center in the public domain]