I haven’t heard any Tea Partiers say to do away with infrastructure. That’s a straw man argument.  There are plenty of arguments against entitlement policies among school teachers, endless social spending and bailouts for banks.  In fact, I think the Occupussies are against bail outs for banks, too.  Or at least half of them are.  Apparently, half of them polled think bailouts are a good idea.

Secondly, for the vast majority taxes in the US are much cheaper than the UK. Taxes in the US in fact are pretty damn low compared to most industrialised countries.See: http://www.taxrates.cc/ for a pretty comprehensive review of taxes in different countries.Finally, it might be true that paying people to drive around in trucks is cheaper than installing sewerage systems in the short term, but its not likely to be cheaper in the long term, as it involves many continuous costs with a smaller start-up cost compared to a larger start-up cost and lower continuous costs. Secondly even if it is economically cheaper in the simplest sense of the word, there are other costs, the most obvious being the tailpipe emissions from the trucks.

Are none of you on a septic system? There are honey wagons all over rural America that pump out people’s septic tank every few years.

I’ve owned two houses with septic tanks. A properly constructed and appropriately-sized system won’t need to be pumped for the first twenty or thirty years. After that, once a year is generally sufficient or it’s time to get a new tank. Many older tanks fail because they’re made of easily breakable materials and roots get into them.

Some homeowners can’t or won’t replace a failing vital system, but pumping is a bug, not a feature, so it’s not a good comparison to a city with no built-in sewer structure.

The problem is that Dubai was and is a town that was built by and for people who were intent on making a quick buck in real estate, and contributing to a common infrastructure system that would cut into everyone’s profits doesn’t fit into that paradigm. The odds are that they can still get labor to physically haul the crap away that’s cheaper than trying to retrofit an adequate sewage system under and around the ridiculously-oversized skyscrapers, and the people who would end up picking up the tab for it aren’t invested long-term. (I suspect that “Woody Deck” above is one of them; these Dubai posts inevitably attract people who want you to believe that things are going great there, why not move there and see for yourself, maybe invest a little…)

Sadly, only the last part of that is made up.

I think that would be news to the Romans.

I cant believe that Dubai could have missed this most obvious step in urban planning. 

I’m actually kind of surprised the architects didn’t use some bio-recycling to fertilize window planters, or something like that.  But I suspect those things smell.  Long live the P-trap.

As the building narrows, water tanks also get smaller, as there is less floorspace requiring water.  But the net effect is that each system only needs to deal with about 10 floors at a time instead of pumping all the way to the top with a massive pump.

The real reason is because skyscrapers are EGO TRIPS, nothing more.  A Sewage system is one of those things that noone in charge cares about.