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a third of America's roads are in bad shape. And bridges aren't doing very well either. This doesn't surprise me. Infrastructure improvements require long-term planning (i.e., leadership), something that's been in short supply for quite some time now.
2 comments:
The infrastructure has been worse. The basic problem with infrastructure today is that it is reliant upon a fixed gas tax that is not indexed to inflation, and this gas tax has not been increased for almost 15 years. In short, we're spending only 2/3rds as much on infrastructure today as we were spending 15 years ago.
It's all about money. The Republicans want to turn us into Mexico North, with a gigantic number of starving peasants trying desperately to survive and a small but filthy rich elite that rules them all and takes all the resources of the nation for themselves. Good infrastructure isn't needed for them to make this plan come to fruition. Indeed, by increasing the standard of living of the peasantry, good infrastructure is a deterrent to their plan. Peasants with a high enough standard of living to spend time looking at their situation, rather than spending every minute of every day trying to survive, are peasants who might get uppity. Can't have that...
- Badtux the Cynical Penguin
The infrastructure and the public sector in general definitely seem to be crumbling. I'm shocked these days at how many major roads connecting major cities have large potholes in them. And I agree that infrastructure improvement doesn't meet the current political agenda of transferring wealth from the poor and middle class to the wealthy. Fixing a road means hiring some ordinary people to work to create something that will last years--all the way into future administrations. Unlike Iraq, it doesn't provide opportunities for handing over suitcases of unmarked (and untracked) bills to unscrupulous insiders in the back room of some Kuwaiti hotel.
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