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Page added on February 21, 2017
America’s Crumbling Infrastructure
No matter what your particular political perspective is, if there is one thing that virtually everyone in the United States can agree upon it is the fact that America’s infrastructure is crumbling. Previous generations of Americans conquered an entire continent and erected the greatest system of infrastructure that the world had ever seen, but now thousands upon thousands of those extremely impressive infrastructure projects are decades old and in desperate need of repair or upgrading. The near catastrophic failure of the Oroville Dam is a perfect example of what I am talking about. We should be constructing the next generation of infrastructure projects for our children and our grandchildren, but instead we are in such sorry shape that we can’t even keep up with the maintenance and upkeep on the great infrastructure projects that have been handed down to us.
Once upon a time nobody on the entire planet could even come close to matching our infrastructure, but now our crumbling infrastructure has become a joke to much of the rest of the industrialized world. Sadly, this is just another symptom of our long-term economic collapse. We simply are not able to put as much of our money toward infrastructure as previous generations of Americans did, and as a result we have a giant mess on our hands. The following are 11 deeply alarming facts about America’s crumbling infrastructure…
#1 According to the American Road and Transportation Builders Association, nearly 56,000 bridges in the United States are currently “structurally deficient”. What makes that number even more chilling is the fact that vehicles cross those bridges a total of 185 million times a day.
#2 More than one out of every four bridges in the United States is more than 50 years old and “have never had major reconstruction work”.
#3 America does not have a single airport that is considered to be in the top 25 in the world.
#4 The average age of America’s dams is now 52 years.
#5 Not too long ago, the American Society of Civil Engineers gave the condition of America’s dams a “D” grade.
#6 Overall, the American Society of Civil Engineers said that the condition of America’s infrastructure as a whole only gets a “D+” grade.
#7 Congestion on our highways costs Americans approximately 101 billion dollars a year in wasted fuel and time.
#8 According to the U.S. Department of Transportation, over two-thirds of our roads are “in dire need of repair or upgrades”.
#9 In order to completely fix all of our roads and bridges, it would take approximately 808 billion dollars.
#10 Federal spending on infrastructure has decreased by 9 percent over the past decade.
#11 According to Bloomberg, it is being projected “that by 2025, shortfalls in infrastructure investment will subtract as much as $3.9 trillion from U.S. gross domestic product.”
The quality of our infrastructure affects all of our lives every single day. For instance, we all simply take it for granted that safe, clean drinking water is going to come out of our taps, but recent events have shown that is not necessarily always going to be the case.
Just ask the residents of Flint, Michigan.
Water pipes, sewer systems and water treatment facilities all over the nation are aging and are in desperate need of repair. Of course the exact same thing could be said about our power grid. It was never intended to handle so many people, and on the hottest days of the summer the strain on the grid is very evident.
And of course the power grid is exceedingly vulnerable to an electromagnetic pulse event, and this is something that I covered in my book on getting prepared. It has been projected that it would only cost a couple billion dollars to harden the grid against an EMP event, but our politicians refuse to spend the money.
Meanwhile, President Trump is completely correct when he says that our airports look like something that you would see in a third world country. Most of our airports are at least several decades old, and they are definitely showing their age.
But things are even worse when you look at other systems of mass transit around the country. While other nations such as Japan and China are investing huge amounts of money into high speed rail, we are doing next to nothing even though what we currently have is absolutely pathetic.
I could go on and talk about our ports, schools, waterways, parks, etc. but I think that you get the point.
President Trump’s instincts are right on the money when he says that he wants to spend a trillion dollars on infrastructure. Without a doubt, we desperately need it.
The problem is that we are flat broke.
We are 20 trillion dollars in debt, and we are adding more than a trillion dollars to that total every year.
So where are we going to get the money?
It is easy for liberals to say that we should raise taxes, but how much more are you going to squeeze out of U.S. consumers? Two-thirds of the country is living paycheck to paycheck, and we just learned that U.S. household debt has risen to a grand total of 12.58 trillion dollars.
Once upon a time, America was the wealthiest nation on the entire planet and we could afford to construct bold, new infrastructure projects from sea to shining sea.
But today we have the biggest mountain of debt in the history of the world and we can’t even afford to repair what we already have.
When I speak of our long-term economic collapse, this is precisely the sort of thing that I am talking about. We have clearly been in decline for a very long time, and anyone that would suggest otherwise is simply not being honest with you.
21 Comments on "America’s Crumbling Infrastructure"
Cloggie on Tue, 21st Feb 2017 6:08 am
The problem is that we are flat broke… So where are we going to get the money?
Probably by not paying back debt.
And retreating from the untenable role of being the world’s hegemon. Nobody is going to stop you from retreating.
America can save a lot of money by lowering defense expenditure and agree with with their European brothers that from now on it is going to be 50/50 rather than US-50%, EU-25%, Russia-13%, China-12%
(so: US-37%, EU-37%, Russia-13%, China-12%)
Perhaps Europe can take-over 5 of the 10 carriers. Not that carriers are that useful in the 21st century with hyper-sonic missiles around. But Europe can still turn them into wind turbines.
Midnight Oil on Tue, 21st Feb 2017 6:09 am
The more you build, they more you need to maintain, fix and repair, and eventually replace. No problem Trump will see to it!
By a stroke of a pen, no less!
Make America GREAT again…
Hello on Tue, 21st Feb 2017 6:29 am
It’s not an american problem only. Europe has similar issues.
makati1 on Tue, 21st Feb 2017 6:34 am
The Empire may go out with a big bang. I do not see any change to the spending on warfare or propaganda. The West has borrowed its way into a corner it cannot get out of. The only question is which domino (EU, US, or Japan) topples first.
Hello on Tue, 21st Feb 2017 7:09 am
mak. It’s very easy to get out of this. Default on dept and move on. What matters is production capabilities and know-how.
Whereas in Manila the highest high tech you have is probably a hammer factory, the west is unmatched in both knowledge and manufacturing capabilities.
Cloggie on Tue, 21st Feb 2017 7:48 am
That’s the spirit, Hello!
http://tinyurl.com/jg3qdaw
Hawkcreek on Tue, 21st Feb 2017 10:37 am
Yeah Hello. That’s the spirit of the nearly dead PO.com.
Crumbling before our eyes.
Go Speed Racer on Tue, 21st Feb 2017 10:46 am
Don’t buy a house below a dam.
Go Speed Racer on Tue, 21st Feb 2017 10:49 am
Next thing ya know, look what happens
http://www.geol.ucsb.edu/faculty/sylvester/Teton_Dam/welcome_dam.html
Apneaman on Tue, 21st Feb 2017 11:20 am
Hello, it’s not 1965 anymore ya know. When your corporate overlords shipped all ‘their’ jobs over seas so little Asian slave labours could do them the knowledge of how the tech works went with the jobs.
On Friday, Mr Duterte told the US “we do not need you”, and that it should “prepare to leave” the Philippines.
Seipi, comprising 270 semiconductors and electronics manufacturers including units of Toshiba and Texas Instruments employing more than two million workers, wants to grow its business with the US, Mr Lachica said.
http://www.thenational.ae/business/economy/philippines-2017-electronics-exports-to-record-modest-gains
This is from 2012, but I imagine not much has changed.
“Seagate was also the first US company to manufacture HDDs outside USA with a plant in Singapore. Now about all component and assembly plants are based in just four countries: China, Korea, Malaysia and Thailand.”
http://www.storagenewsletter.com/rubriques/hard-disk-drives/217-companies-hdd-since-1956/
Better hope that a huge chunk of the brain power, Indians, that is silicone don’t get a better offer back home. American tech would never have dominated without those nice brown people.
The most powerful Indian technologists in Silicon Valley
Engineers and executives from the sub-continent are hugely influential in the industry, from USB and Pentium to journalism
“Ever since waves of Indian graduates poured into Silicon Valley in Northern California in the 1970s and 1980s, talented Indians have made breakthroughs, pushed boundaries and held positions of power in the world of technology and media.
Almost all the big US technology companies have technology pioneers of Indian descent, including the fathers of the USB and technology blogging.”
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/apr/11/powerful-indians-silicon-valley
Hello, keep up that classic white boy American arrogance. Hilarious.
“Pride goeth before destruction, and an haughty spirit before a fall.” Proverbs 16:18
Hello on Tue, 21st Feb 2017 11:58 am
Ape, I’m not american.
Are you a 3rd world moocher, for being upset about white superiority?
Anonymous on Tue, 21st Feb 2017 12:21 pm
The sad thing is, the Jewnited Snakes could easily take that 808 billion out of its war and terrorism budget, and that would still leave 400billion left over for war.
Current war-related spending in the empire 1.2 Trillion
And that’s just for one year.
Funny how the EC blog didn’t connect those dots. Or maybe its just to be expected. Few amerikans are capable of grasping the connection between their decreasing standards of living, and the uS war-machines ever increasing demands.
If they could, or would, they might also realize(dimly), where the true priorities of the amerio-Z war state lay. That is to say, not with the well-being, or people of the nation.
Apneaman on Tue, 21st Feb 2017 12:31 pm
Hello, I’m not “upset” about so called white superiority, but I do like to burst mythological bubbles. What are so superior at? All I see is that it was european then N America’s turn on top. If whites are so superior how come it took them until 1500 to even start to dominate? Were they on a coffee break for the other 4 thousand years of civilizational history? Count up all the inventions prior to Euro whitey from the Chinese, Indians, Muslim scientific era (Arabs, Persians, etc). It’s in the thousands. Now much of that was brought to Europe starting with the crusades and a bunch of it as cultural exchange via trading. Take away that foundation and what do you have? Feudalism. Don’t take it away and simply acknowledge that every generation is standing on the shoulders of those who came before them from many many cultures. You can’t handle that because the truth bursts your worldview bubble. How fucking insecure you must be to need to cling to some bunk racial theories. What’s the point Hello? Assume you are correct (you’re not) why continually bring up white superiority? What’s it to you? Do you think you get to be superior by extension because you have white skin? Do you have any noteworthy accomplishments to share with us to prove your superiority? NO. If you did you would not remain anonymous. IOW, you’re a fucking loser who has, at best, led an unspectacular slave wage commuter life and you are desperate to hitch your wagon to anything in a futile bid to feel important and meaningful. How insecure is that? Fact is it’s rather normal behaviour for the humans and to think rationally takes effort and most of all, raw self honesty. Clinging to the tribe and all it’s myths and stories is easy.
Here’s a quote from, IMO, one of the greatest white men in history.
“The unexamined life is not worth living”- Socrates
They killed Socrates for his raw honesty. He was rocking the tribal boat.
70-80% of the US congress is white men. If they are so superior how come they can’t even fix the fucking pot holes?
Davy on Tue, 21st Feb 2017 12:43 pm
WTF, Ape, Hello is Swiss. Are you being classic white boy Canadian? Canadians are such dumbasses. They can’t even figure out who their bad guys are.
Hello on Tue, 21st Feb 2017 1:09 pm
Ape>> “you would not remain anonymous”
I’m not anonymous, I’m Hello, how could you mistake me?
Otherwise you pretty much wrong on all counts. Well maybe not with Socrates, I don’t know, did you look it up on wiki?
Hubert on Tue, 21st Feb 2017 1:11 pm
600 billion dollars a year on Military Industrial Complex. This Stupid Country has been eaten inside out.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w4UiDEQ0t-8
Apneaman on Tue, 21st Feb 2017 1:35 pm
Hello, I read about Socrates, including the quote, long before there was a WWW. In one of these things they call books.
Hello, please enlighten me on this white superiority you drone on about. Can you explain it or is it just a “feeling”. Did daddy have something to do with those ideas?
So your Swiss. Big fucking whoop. The “neutral” Swiss playing both ends from the middle during WWII and then moved on to be the criminal worlds bankers – very clever, very pragmatic, very Machiavellian and all the while pretending to be euro sophicates. Fuck the Swiss.
It’s ok if you need a little time to put your white superiority essay together. I’ll be around.
Hello on Tue, 21st Feb 2017 1:50 pm
They now even have a “negro invention” day in schools. That’s to be politicaly correct and to highlight the enormous contribution of the negro to western civilization. The invention is pretty much “high five” with its later refinement, the low-5. Certainly a great achievement, no doubt. But it pales in comparision to the wearing of jeans at knee level, or to wearing ball-caps with the price tag still on.
So you’re right after all, there’s great contributions coming from the 3rd world, maybe even outdoing Kanada?
Apneaman on Tue, 21st Feb 2017 1:54 pm
Davy, why must you continue to insist that everyone comply with your black and white, good guys – bad guys worldview? How come there are no grey guys? I see plenty of complicated grey people out there. BTW, is there some international ruling body who sit in committees for months at a time to decide the parameters for good guys & bad guys, or do we just sorta wing it as we go along?
Davy on Tue, 21st Feb 2017 2:02 pm
Ape, you are the one who is into good guy / bad guy thing. You are a regular tough guy who wants to kick ass and take names. We know all about your bad guys with your regular presence. That fine, but I am going to call you out if it involves me and you are wrong. Don’t be sloppy or you look like a fool. Do I say much when you bash your favorite boatyard? No, why, because he asks for it. We all get called out for being fools. No big deal just sharpen your pencil.
Harquebus on Tue, 21st Feb 2017 7:02 pm
Constructing infrastructure leaves future generations with a maintenance legacy the same as we are facing now.