[Texas_Jarhead]

You mean massive social spending haven’t kept the infrastructure in good working order? Go figure.

[knarf]

You forgot the increase in population ... rapid increase.

[sand88]

You mean massive social spending haven’t kept the infrastructure in good working order? Go figure.

You hit the nail on the head. Most of government is transfer programs. The unfunded pensions at the state, federal and local level is over $20 Trillion. Government long ago shifted towards socialism. It's astounding the number of citizens that get paychecks or other largess. It will only get worse. Government would be wise to terminate socialist programs and shift funds to infrastructure. That will not happen; instead they will say government is "cut to the bone" and taxes need to be raised. If one truly looks at the scope of government power, it is obvious difficult decades for Liberty lie ahead. Sad.

[Buddy B]

I often read that the United States of America builds roads in IRAQ...etc.

[hinckley buzzard]

I've been reading this headline for a good twenty years. Somehow things seem to get fixed. I think it was back in the seventies, when there was also a "Capital crunch"(Business Week said we were running out of money) that "half the bridges in the US were at severe risk of failing." Somehow we found the money and it all hung together for another generation.

[pierrem15]

Heh. Or how about "Turning most infrastructure projects into bloated jobs and pork programs for political backers hasn't worked?"

"A lack of political will because of fear of raising taxes is mainly responsible for the shortfall,.."

No. The money spent is simply wasted in unjustified employee wages and benefits or stolen by politically connected contractors.

I think here in Chicago that we're lucky if 10 cents on the dollar is actually delivered in terms of work done on any given public project. Case in point: a renovation of a 10 mile streatch of El is costing $500 million dollars. That's $50 million dollars per mile for two railway tracks and a few stations.

I need to figure out how many millimeters of gold plate could be applied to each rail for the same money.