"Crazy expensive" doesn't really matter when you're a government and can borrow or print to make investments that have investment returns in the form of efficiency gains that go on to improve the economy, much like what corporations do to grow (borrow, reinvest profits gained from growth). There isn't really any good macroeconomic evidence that inflation is to blame because of said funding strategies, as explained by PhD Joeri Schasfoort in multiple of his videos[1], much to the behest right wing populist politicians who lie about not being able to invest in infrastructure. In the UK, Rishi Sunak is cancelling our HS2 railway falsely citing costs and even sabotaging it by sidestepping the democratically elected House of Commons by selling off gov. owned land so that the incoming Labour government will have a hard time un-cancelling HS2 - even our old conservative Brexit-causing PM David Cameron is criticising it publicly (ex-PMs rarely criticise their own party's contemporary government).

[1] https://www.youtube.com/@MoneyMacro/videos

[–] burningmatches@feddit.uk 5 points 1 year ago

Part of the problem is that many government’s don’t fund infrastructure investment themselves. By privatising utilities and other vital infrastructure they can appear to “cut spending”. Of course, in reality the cost is much higher (and/or the investment is much lower) because privatised entities need to make a margin and (by definition) have higher borrowing costs than the government.