I'm sympathetic to that reasoning, but I see the American standard of living -- particularly as we currently measure it -- as more of a moving target. Last week I described the predicament in Lafayette, Louisiana, where the typical family would need to spend 20% of their pre-tax income maintaining local infrastructure just to keep what has already been built from falling apart. That won't happen, and so the future of Lafayette -- and most American cities -- is likely to look a lot like the present day Flint.

So if we're going to help Flint -- and I'm on board with doing so -- I think we also need to consider that whatever we do in Flint must be scaleable across the continent. Replacing a system of failing, insolvent infrastructure with an identical (but newer) system of failing, insolvent infrastructure not only doesn't solve the underlying math equation, it doesn't scale to the size of our actual national problem. We need to think differently.

I've seen two cost estimates for dealing with Flint's water system. The first: $60 million to replace lead service lines. The service line is the small pipe that runs between the city's water pipe and the house. Given the age of Flint's system, it is possible that some of these are completely lead. This would make a significant impact, but it wouldn't address the lead in the pipes within the house or in the city's system.

The second estimate is quite different: $1.5 billion for "fixing" the city's water infrastructure. Given the size of Flint, that number likely includes replacement of much of the distribution system -- which certainly has lead problems -- as well as repairs/replacements to treatment and storage systems. I find this number to be wholly plausible.

Which is a huge problem. A repair cost of $1.5 billion is $14,000 per Flint resident. Given that a median house in Flint is worth just $29,000, a new water system in the city is going to be worth more than the houses being served by it. And that's just the water. You have roads, streets, sidewalks, curbs, drainage, sewer as well as gas and electric infrastructure that's all reaching the end of its useful life. A median household income of $23,000 suggests that a conventional approach is not viable.

And to be clear, it's not viable in the same way that giving the typical suburban commuter a free Hummer would not be viable. It's overkill for the job and not a very efficient use of scarce resources. Now imagine the commuter was required to service and maintain the Hummer forever and then be responsible for replacing it with an exact duplicate model when it stopped running (or lose their job). It might feel like a nice gesture initially, but the mismatch along the way creates more harm than good.

Even if we just look at Flint in isolation and don't consider the plight of the rest of America, there is a fine line between doing what is right in society's eyes and imposing society's value system on people who may have different priorities.

So how do we actually think differently?