The investment concept can be elusive

Baltimore & Ohio Railroad, Thomas Viaduct, Spanning Patapsco River, Elkridge, Howard County, MD. Library of Congress photo.

(Image via w...)

Blair Kamin, the Pulitzer Prize-winning architecture writer for the Chicago Tribune has a great piece about infrastructure, "The way we move--and live."

Collapsed section of the I-35W bridge in Minneapolis, Minnesota. The murky, swirling waters of the Mississippi river hampered the work of divers Thursday searching for up to 30 people still missing after a huge bridge collapsed late Wednesday, killing at least four.(AFP/Getty Images/Scott Olson)

Neal Peirce's new column, "Big, Bad New Tax Still The Best Road Deal," makes the point that the cost of replacing the collapsed bridge in Minneapolis will cost $300 million, but repairing it before it collapsed would have cost $2 million.
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When I worked at the Center for Science in the Public Interest many years ago, I used to joke about the director that his philosophy was "show me what you can do with absolutely nothing, and I will give you a very little bit." On the other hand, the organization figured out that it had to invest in direct marketing in order to make money from its newsletter. At the time I worked there we spent $1 million/year on direct mail, and had 240,000 subscriber-members. (Since then, circulation has tripled.) But I used to grouse that while they understood the investment concept as it related to membership development, they didn't understand that the investment concept needed to be applied to other areas of the organization, including the publishing section that I managed.