This tactic is now being used by President Biden and other lawmakers in support of an anticipated $2 trillion infrastructure bill they are expected to propose by arguing that the definition of "Infrastructure" should be expanded to include anything remotely connected to the economy.
What is new is how open supporters of this effort have been about the fact that they are attempting to do this by changing the definition of a word, the New York Times opining with approval that Biden's plan "Is a radical reimagining of what infrastructure means."
Supporters of the anticipated bill wish to reach the conclusion that the United States should enact progressive social programs and, to reach that conclusion, they are attempting to change the definition of "Infrastructure" in this context from "The system of public works of a country, state, or region" to anything that makes it easier for an individual to get to her job.
It is not necessarily false to say childcare is in some sense a kind of infrastructure if it allows more mothers to take on jobs outside the home,.
Because childcare can plausibly be called a kind of infrastructure, it can pseudo-logically be grafted onto existing beliefs among most Americans about the propriety of government spending on traditional infrastructure, even though the ideas are materially different.
This existing acceptance most people seem to have of government spending on traditional infrastructure, misguided as it may be, is now being used to expand their ideas about what is acceptable government expenditure to include publicly funded childcare programs.
The attempt to characterize childcare and similar government programs as infrastructure cannot be understood as an honest attempt to convince average Americans to support a policy through rational argumentation.
https://mises.org/wire/infrastructure-now-anything-government-wants-do
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