No place for wisdom where politics, economics intersect
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EDWARD GLAESER (“Put transit where the people are,’’ Op-ed, July 3) is right that “a smart transportation policy would recognize the wisdom of using our existing infrastructure more efficiently, with the help of congestion pricing, rather than building more roads,’’ and that politicians don’t seem to be wise. But the current political system is such that politicians don’t have to be wise. In fact, wisdom is what would harm their political dividends because it would bring economic responsibility to citizens that they don’t want to face.
There is little political incentive, if any, for state governments to implement economically justified pricing schemes such as setting tolls on projects, such as the Big Dig, that require a lot of construction and maintenance costs. Moreover, it may be politically beneficial for the federal government to build high-speed rails in places such as Alabama and Oklahoma with doubtful claims “that these trains will jump-start economic growth.’’
In our era, politics dominates economics, and the term “allocative efficiency’’ has become inappropriate. Unfortunately, this scenario is not sustainable in the long term, and history already has one tragic example, the Soviet Union, of which I was a witness.
Dmitriy Kha
Cambridge 
