NEW YORK – When a major highway bridge in California collapsed last month, the impact on the entire southwestern United States once again highlighted the country’s serious infrastructure problem. Indeed, in a sense, the world’s largest economy is falling apart.
Ideological aversion to public-sector investment, together with the endemic short-term thinking of those who write budgets, has kept spending on roads, airports, railways, telecommunication networks, and power generation at levels far below what is needed. And yet the problem can no longer be ignored. If the US does not act quickly to provide its fragile economic recovery with a solid foundation of modern infrastructure, it could find itself sinking slowly back into stagnation.
