Why Do People Keep Saying American Infrastructure is "crumbling"?

A recurring theme on various forums is how American infrastructure is supposedly "crumbling" and thus we shouldn't be spending money overseas and/or on various wars and/or on the military.

But is the infrastructure of the U.S., nationwide, really "crumbling"? I know its easy to jump to conclusions every time there is a high profile bridge failure or we get warmings about a possible dam being a danger somewhere, but in a nation the size of the United States with as much public infrastructure that we have aren't we always going to have something falling apart somewhere? Simple laws of averages.

 

It's just another attempt to make the taxpayer feel guilty about not wanting to pay more in taxes. It is the collectivists' way to "shame" someone for wanting to keep what they earned.

 

I think there's really a need as per ASCE's findings and $4.5T would really cover a huge part of infrastructures to fix, in addition even Trump made it a part of his promises.

https://www.businessinsider.com/asce-gives-us-infrastructure-a-d-2017-3

 

The soft bigotry of low expectations huh?

Newsflash...a survey of our bridges was done 20 years ago and found huge numbers in desperate need of repair or replacement. Most of them haven't been addressed.

Republicans seem bound and determined to turn us into a third world country

 

In my small, clean very first world city, we handle infrastructure locally and a bit from the state. As it should be. The only "crumbling infrastructure" that the federal government should be beholden to address is interstate infrastructure and federal government property. Everything else should fall to cities and states to maintain.

Agree with OP, "crumbling infrastructure" is a lie narrative used to create large pools of money that are then divvied up among special interests in the Complex, public unions, gov contractors, gov grantees, crony contributors, voting blocs, instead of the advertised infrastructure. This scam has been going on for decades. Here's one example, full of facts, that I have linked several times here. Curiously, no LW Complex ever respond to it:

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/weekly-standard/no-country-for-burly-men

Note how easily feminists coopted hundreds of billions of stimulus money that had been earmarked for infrastructure and industries hit hardest by the recession. This happens CONSTANTLY at the federal level. They also do it with "green" energy companies. See Solyndra and a whole bunch of other utterly failed government GRAFT companies.

LW Complex don't address this because as long as they get to wet their beaks in the downstream graft troughs, they don't care.

 

It's not just bridges, it's almost everything.
China now has freight trains that are about twice as fast as ours. They are on the way to kicking our butt with 5G.
Then you look at a thread like the one here on minimum wage and you would think the solution is to cut wages to less that the Chinese.
To do "stuff" costs money. Money you don't get with lower taxes.

 

Third World Country here we come folks

Jesus...

 

If you lived here in Massachusetts (one party, Democrat ridiculous taxes) you might think so. Our roads are the worst, if you are entering Massachusetts from any neighboring state you could tell you were here with your eyes closed. The state has identified 4,718 bridges that are in need of repairs and estimated it would cost $18.5 billion to fix them. There are many state and local government buildings built in the 19th century here that are still in operation because the money to replace them for some reason cannot be found. This includes public schools, one in five need renovations or replacement. I think it's a matter of priorities and politics. I've been to many states where it's obvious that tax dollars are well spent and others, surprise, surprise, majority Democrat states that are in shambles. These state's revenues shrunk significantly when they chased away industry and the hardest hit were the mill towns. Every large urban area in Massachusetts has many derelict, crumbling, empty factory buildings. Some have been repurposed but most are ruins. I know that those are private property but they are still a problem regarding public safety. We certainly can do better, again it's about priorities, we are over committed abroad and here we are spending billions each year on illegal immigration. We need to focus on America and let other nations attend to their own problems and we need a moratorium on immigration. We are still the greatest nation on the planet but we don't even have a healthcare system that works or dependable nation wide mass transit. Massachusetts has an antiquated public transportation system and for a small state you would not believe all the blank spots on the map the represent areas where public transportation doesn't exist.

 

Any source from other than civil engineers? I can't take seriously as a source people who stand to gain if their opinions are acted upon.

 

And, in the end, they won't spend the money on important infrastructure. They'll build new things that they can put their names on and thus garner more votes.

 

They hit a pothole during their 5 mile hour long commute i their socialist paradise and want to take your money to fix it.. give in man they have outrage.

 

LOS ANGELES, April 3, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- If roads, bridges and other parts of the U.S. infrastructure continue to erode at the current rate and trucks are no longer able to safely pass, within only five days our lives would come to a complete halt. The result would be a crippling depletion of food, drinking water, medicine, fuel and other daily necessities. Airports would close, trash would pile up, industrial production would stop, public transit would end and the country would come to a standstill. The reality of this debilitating scenario is examined in "Be Prepared to Stop," a documentary film about the failing U.S. Interstate Highway System.

"Be Prepared to Stop" debuts on Amazon April 6 and will be released on iTunes later in the month. More information and a preview are available at BePreparedToStop.org.
https://www.marketwatch.com/press-r...-on-lives-of-americans-and-economy-2017-04-03

 

Why?
I just went to Google maps and took a random suburb - https://goo.gl/maps/zTqYPLneUv2D3dWDA

Look at the road.
And that was really the first random shot I took. Perhaps there are worse places and surely there are better ones. But yeah, those roads look like they are crumbling and need refurbishing.

 

The ASCE estimates the US needs to spend some $4.5 trillion by 2025 to improve the state of the country's roads, bridges, dams, airports, schools, and more.

My state wouldn’t know anything about US spending for infrastructure. Living in the largest city in America without a 3 digit Interstate the Phoenix metropolitan area said “screw you” to Uncle Sam and built hundreds of miles of modern freeways on our own dime.

 

So what happened to Bill and Obama getting it done?

 

Well no wonder! You landed in Cleveland Ohio!

 

I work in the sewer. Seems like the bigger the city, the older and worse shape the sewers are in. I suspect this is due in part to traffic. You can't tear up the roads to fix/replace the sewers when you have too much traffic to efficiently reroute.

 

Well, if you have to, you eventually have to.

 

The infrastructure in the US is not as new as it is in other wealthy developed countries in Asia and Europe.

Much of America's infrastructure was built in the 30s, 40s, and 50s. If you think about all the job-creating infrastructure projects the government undertook during the Great Depression, and then the economic boom after World War II.

Part of the reason (but only part of it) is that America was the first country to build modern infrastructure, so much of the modern infrastructure that exists is also the oldest.

Also America does not have the same level of social homogeneity or cohesion as other countries that have (at least 20 years ago) better infrastructure, so there may be an issue of psychological unwillingness to make greater public investment.

 

What's wrong with Cleveland, Ohio?

 

The studies in PA were so bad that we now have the highest gas tax in the country in order to try to rectify it. But roads and bridges are just part of the problem. My father use to work at Beth steel. The steelworkers often complained that after we bombed the crap out of Germany and Japan, we helped to rebuild those countries using the latest tech. This while US workers had to make due with run down, obsolete equipment. It's pretty much like that with everything and part of the problem is the expense of regulations. Take any building project. Before the first shovel of dirt is removed there is a mountain of red tape to get through. It can take years and years just to get past that process. Now of course many regulations have some benefit, but how many where the cost to benefit ratio makes it not worth it? Be that as it may, everything has a cost and so companies and governments rather put out fires than be proactive. So, you have water mains just waiting to burst and power lines hanging in there until something takes them down. In a perfect world money wouldn't be wasted and the money now going to the government would be enough to maintain the infrastructure and stockholders wouldn't get upset about short term company profits and instead look at profits in the long run, but here we are.

 

Do an assessment of those on unemployment benefits to sort those physically and mentally capable of doing work from those who are less than abled, and have the former work on infrastructure projects instead of sitting around. Make participation a prestigious qualification with trade certificates like we do in Aus so they can move on up.

 

Empty hot air dodge. Not surprised considering the source.

 

Most first world nation are in the same boat when it comes to infrastructure spendings. They prefer to invest in "bread and games" projects to keep the population happy instead of water works and bridges. Governments invest more in stadiums than they do in hospitals. Here we spent millions building a new concert hall for the philarmonic orchestra for a tiny number of people who goes to see them play, yet we've waited for the higway turnpikes to nearly crumble to pieces (it was 20 years passed it's rebuilt due date).

First world nations are in fact second tier nation with a thin golden veneer on top. Most don't have the liquidity to quickly adress major infrastructure problems or catastrophes.
China is in the same boat except that they don't have to deal with workers unions & civil rights so they can shave off the cost of manpower from their projects. Try this in a western country and see where it'll take you.

 

You like Fox News better as a source about the condition of infrastructure better than civil engineers? For some reason, I'm not surprised at all.