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The World Socialist Web Site reports
The American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) released its quadrennial "Report Card" last month on the condition of infrastructure in the United States. Once again, the association gave the country an overall grade of D+, the same as in 2013.
The report is a damning appraisal of the state of American society under capitalism, and the Obama years, which saw essential social needs starved of funding while the stock market tripled in value and vast public resources were squandered on war. This will only accelerate under Trump.
The ASCE report assesses the state of sixteen different categories of infrastructure: aviation, bridges, dams, drinking water, energy, hazardous waste, inland waterways, levees, parks and recreation, ports, rail, roads, schools, solid waste, transit and wastewater.
Twelve of the sixteen sections evaluated earned a D grade. The report defines a D grade as "The infrastructure is in poor to fair condition and mostly below standard, with many elements approaching the end of their service life. A large portion of the system exhibits significant deterioration. Condition and capacity are of serious concern with strong risk of failure."
According to ASCE, the total costs to bring all US infrastructure into an adequate condition would exceed two trillion dollars.
[...] ASCE's answer to this crisis is not only inadequate but downright reactionary.
[...] In the section of the report titled "solutions to raise the grade" the authors suggest that "Infrastructure owners and operators must charge, and Americans must be willing to pay, rates and fees that reflect the true cost of using, maintaining, and improving infrastructure." Other sections advocate "user generated fees", hiking the gasoline tax, and other regressive proposals that would disproportionately affect the country's poorest citizens. The report also calls for more "public-private" partnerships, along with the streamlining of approval for private investment in public infrastructure projects.
Such free-market measures would only create an ever-greater class-based infrastructure system, where only those who could afford to will be able to drive on high toll expressways and bridges, send their children to quality schools, drink clean water, and live in areas not threatened with constant flooding or environmental disasters.
View the ASCE's report card here.
(Score: 2) by Snotnose on Monday April 17 2017, @12:22AM (2 children)
until we start voting out the politicians who would rather have their name on a new bridge than maintain the existing bridges. This has been going on for 30 years. As a homeowner for 30 years I know that if the roof leaks you fix it, else the leak spreads and eventually the roof collapses. Which means you now have to fix the leak, fix the roof, buy new electronics, and new furniture.
Then again, if I could pass the buck and move out at no cost to me before the roof collapses, then, well, ya know. And I'm of a higher moral fiber than most politicians I've run across.
When the dust settled America realized it was saved by a porn star.
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Monday April 17 2017, @01:36AM
In the feature people will have to drive over patchy roads to buy fuel to heat and light their home. Stopping at intervals to charge the battery for a hour. A big truck is needed because water, food, energy supplies all has to fit. All paid with gold coins. To find the best deals everybody has a satellite phone set because the fibers are not maintained. At home the food has to be tested to not contain deadly fungi or contaminants. Health care is taken care by the village uncle that still remembers his exam from the 80s and in return he get to feel the female patients a little extra. Vandals and thiefs are dealt with 9 mm and the village has a round robin duty to dig a hole for each of them paid with fresh apples in return.
Hurricane warnings are easy, house still there? ok. If not too bad..
Prosperous feature! ;-)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 17 2017, @06:47AM
We should only name bridges for politicians AFTER they fall down.
(Score: -1, Redundant) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 17 2017, @12:25AM
Here under the bridge where I live, there's a puddle of water that won't evaporate in any weather. Probably because I keep pissing in it.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by maggotbrain on Monday April 17 2017, @12:58AM (10 children)
Anecdotally, I've got 5 co-workers who think that it is acceptable that the government bombs the shit out of Syria and Afghanistan( or defund public education, or other public services) without a thought to the cost financially, socially, pragmatically, etc.. But, heaven forbid, that the long arm of the government take an extra $400-$600/yr out of their pockets of a family of 2 for the tabs on their four over-sized, $70k+ cars that they regularly use for solo commutes every day of the year. Light rail, better bus lines, car pooling, regional park and rides all appear, to them, as commie plots to take away their "right" to drive a car whenever they want and then they piss and moan about the non-locals moving into town to clog up traffic and steal their jobs.
The Tragedy of the Commons and Eternal September concepts are lost on them.
/rant off
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 17 2017, @01:16AM (5 children)
Why don't you give $400-$600/yr out of your pocket?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 17 2017, @05:24AM (2 children)
Selfish moron. Itbis implicit that everyone would be paying $400-600, that is how large community projects are funded. You are the embodiment of the problem, such a selfish attitude. "I've got mine, who cares if a family is homeless and struggling to feed their kids. Reproduction is a choice so its their fault! Oh, but they'd better not abort that'd be wrong!"
Hypocrisy is ugly.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 17 2017, @06:16AM (1 child)
Yeah, why don't you give $400-$600/yr out of your pocket yet?
You know what's hypocrisy? Thinking you have a right to my pocket while not letting me do the same to your pocket.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 17 2017, @05:36PM
You better not think you have a right to my pocket to pay for border walls, wars, and mass deportations.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 17 2017, @05:30AM (1 child)
The point was, I believe, that war costs money just as well. Exactly from your pockets.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 17 2017, @06:37AM
Everything costs money too, what's your point?
(Score: 3, Interesting) by GungnirSniper on Monday April 17 2017, @03:55AM
All of the options you list are useful only if your time has no value. Why not heavy rail underground?
Tips for better submissions to help our site grow. [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 17 2017, @05:37AM (2 children)
This would be a good point to mention that crappy roads beat up cars more than well-maintained roads.
The extra wear/breakage is gonna cost you.
The more expensive the car, the more expensive the parts too.
Driving on lousy roads also increases the chance that you will lose control of your vehicle.
Straightening out crunched car bodies costs/drives up insurance rates.
...then there's dealing with crunched human bodies.
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 17 2017, @02:00PM (1 child)
Crunched human bodies are a profit center.
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Monday April 17 2017, @08:07PM
In the same way that sending people into the city to smash windows increases GDP..
If your neighboring country instead let these people think out the technological advance. You lost.
(unless they hamstring themselves with thought crime)
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 17 2017, @12:58AM
Pols have been raiding the gas tax for years now. Time to fix the roads from the general fund, we all take advantage of them, even people without cars use goods that come in by truck (and trucks do most of the road damage).
(Score: 3, Insightful) by kaszz on Monday April 17 2017, @01:25AM (6 children)
Along the same line as Texas Solution to Untested Rape Kits: Ask Drivers for Donations at the Department of Public Safety office [soylentnews.org] ..? It's the same thing. If the money that is already taken by IRS is squandered. Well then there will be not much left. In fact given sufficient bad priorities no amount of money will ever do. So the problem isn't money but how they are prioritized.
If the bad priorities continue. There will be little capacity to generate the value (not money) to back up the monetary system and then there will be no any resources to do either wars or infrastructure. It's like peeing in your pants. Gets you warm quickly one time, then you have to deal with the consequences for a long time.
Bu- but oil! ie petrodollar. Well I would not bet my future on that. Peak cheap oil and carbon reduction by regulation or natural disaster(s) will end it in a ordered or chaotic manner. Any way you like it.
Some things are really good to do on a individual basis. Others are more suitable for a collective effort. They tend to be few but really required. Either everybody could have their own dedicated cable to Google or one could share the same super fiber..
(Score: 2) by frojack on Monday April 17 2017, @05:04AM (5 children)
Electric cars and hybrids are really a tiny portion of the fleet these days. But they, along with increased mileage of iCEs have cut the gas tax revenue to such an extent that many states are thinking of imposing a mileage tax on electric vehicles.
Still, except in the middle of poor cities, the roads are not that bad, at least in the western half of the country where I've spent three weeks traveling around thru 6 states. After a tough winter you expect rough roads, but I was amazed how little of that I actually found, and how much of the rural (non freeway) roads are in very good condition. You had to go into cities to find pot holes. And usually into poor cities.
We encountered stretches of freeway being rebuilt in place in just about every state we entered. Its not like Zero money is being spent.
You have to consider the source of this story. I doubt it is as bad as they claim. I'm sure its not as good as we would like it to be.
They've never given a overall grade above D in their entire organization's life.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 2) by bzipitidoo on Monday April 17 2017, @05:20AM (4 children)
The gas tax is a fixed amount per gallon. Since 1993, it has been 18.4 cents per gallon. That little feature combined with inflation has done more to cut revenue than improved mileage has. It should have been a percentage all along. That it isn't is a huge gift to Big Oil.
Yeah, the report can't help but be biased, try as they might to be neutral. The writers are interested parties who stand to benefit by the growth of their profession from all the infrastructure work they recommend.
I should like to see growth in other means of transport. We wouldn't need so many highways if people weren't joined at the hips to their cars.
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Monday April 17 2017, @05:36AM (3 children)
Efficient transportation would be high speed trains. Directly into city cores, TSA free and even if someone brings something bad. Trains are tough vehicles.
At least between larger cities some kind of train autobahn would probably be profitable.
Japan, China, Europe can do it, but not USA?
(Score: 2) by bzipitidoo on Monday April 17 2017, @01:36PM (2 children)
That's politics for you. For decades, there's been talk of building a high speed passenger rail line between Dallas and Houston. Texas is very pro-transportation, yet it has never been done. Texas is not so keen on public transportation. Among others, airlines oppose the idea. Many among the public are easily spooked into feeling that passenger rail enables poor, crime prone people to get around better, and will therefore cause a rise in crime. Dallas recently connected its 2 major airports with light rail. Somewhat predictably, taxi drivers were opposed. There are always some special interests to take the anti-social side of a non-issue issue.
Another long discussed route for high speed rail is San Francisco to Los Angeles. California is of course much friendlier towards public things. But they are very much against tearing up even a little of the environment to build more roads. A blindingly obvious road improvement they ought to do but haven't is extend I40 to I5.
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Monday April 17 2017, @07:46PM
Maybe time for Schweitzer style of governing. If enough people sign a petition it is to be voted on by constitution. And the result is the law.
In the end there are certain parameters that make a society successful. Whenever people for whatever reason steer outside of these parameters degradation follows.
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Monday April 17 2017, @08:05PM
Some additional thought. If the politics get the country stuck then the society at large will fall behind and others will take the economic and technological lead. This affect the doctrine of cultural values too, like freedom, rule of law, self determination etc.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 17 2017, @03:41AM
...except if Apple and Starbucks were in charge of infrastructure, nobody would blame capitalism for their poor upkeep. They'd probably find a way to blame Trump supporters.
(Score: 2) by xpda on Monday April 17 2017, @06:18AM (4 children)
The United States has better communications than it's ever had. U.S. phone and internet service could be better, but they never have.
The United States has better air transportation than it's ever had. You can fly across the country more safely and faster than ever before, if you don't include the time wasted on the politically motivated security theater.
The United States has better roads, on average, than it's ever had. You can drive across the country faster and more safely than ever before, with more services available along the way. Sure, there are paved roads being converted to gravel. This has been happening as long as I can remember. There are many more gravel roads that are paved every year.
"The nation's crumbling infrastructure" is a highly effective, politically born term that shows up in under-researched news articles and politically motivated slander pieces. Look at the facts and statistics rather than anecdotes. There's always room for more improvement, but the U.S. infrastructure is and has been improving for a long time.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 17 2017, @08:40AM (2 children)
It's nice that all the roads where you are could sustain 120mph travel because they are in such awesome shape.
It's also nice to know that you don't have any bridges falling into rivers. [google.com]
I'm also glad to hear that you have 10gbps internet with no caps and five 9s of uptime.
I'm also jealous of your electric service which hasn't gone down multiple times with an electric company knowing that the service is underspec'd and them shining-on the upgrade for 2 summers.
Many major surface streets around here are years behind on maintenance and the sidewalks are just pitiful.
I guess we're lucky that we don't need more bridges.
Maybe the folks in NYC can describe how their water system is over a century old and leaks about as much water as it delivers.
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Monday April 17 2017, @07:49PM (1 child)
What do you think about three phase to the home? makes running power motors way easier..
(and lead free water luxury..)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 17 2017, @08:48PM
That would add complexity, so the power company wouldn't do it.
The expense of adding a 3rd conductor and all the insulators to support that wouldn't fly unless they were already feeding an industrial area along that run.
It wouldn't have solved my problem anyway.
Each time, we lost 1 phase because the transformer was underspec'd (increased demand in this neighborhood over the years) and a fuse at the transformer blew repeatedly.
Edison knew what the problem was but they dragged their feet until they had multiple outages and a bunch of pissed-off customers (very much like the way MICROS~1 handles security updates).
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Monday April 17 2017, @05:15PM
The United States has better air transportation than it's ever had. You can fly across the country more safely and faster than ever before
This is false. You could fly across the country faster in the 1970s than now. Planes used to fly significantly faster back then, because they didn't care about fuel economy much (fuel was cheap and ticket prices were high), and it was also much faster to get on the plane since they didn't have TSA. Safely, I'll grant you that, but not faster. Air travel is a lot slower now than it's been since the rise of passenger jets.
There's always room for more improvement, but the U.S. infrastructure is and has been improving for a long time.
The other thing you're missing is competition. 50 years ago, the US was the most industrialized nation on the planet, so even if it was lackluster in some ways, it didn't have any competition beating it, so it was #1 by whatever transportation metric you choose. This just isn't true any more. Lots of other countries are now far superior to the US in many ways, especially air travel. Our air travel is the very worst in the industrialized world; any non-US carrier will give you a far better experience than any US carrier. In Europe, Japan, etc., you can get around very quickly and efficiently with high-speed rail, which basically doesn't exist here in the US. Roads in places like Germany and Japan are far, far, far superior to those here. In short, everyone else is passing us by. This will take a toll on us economically, as more and more commerce goes to other places and the US turns into an economic backwater.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 17 2017, @06:39AM (1 child)
...America's infrastructure is a DD+. Big league, very big.
(Score: 2) by linkdude64 on Monday April 17 2017, @07:18PM
"Suck on that, you commies!"
(Score: 2) by bradley13 on Monday April 17 2017, @07:36AM (5 children)
The ASCE report is interesting; I remember the last time it came out as well. It has it's biases, and tends to score things rather low. On the other hand, the Soylent submission is based on the World Socialist article discussing the ASCE report. Given the source, their article discusses the political aspects of the ASCE report with...a certain bias. The combination of these two is a bit bizarre.
Politics: Infrastructure is expensive. However, socialists think that money magically appears when you want to spend it, and has no end. What was the most recent? Oh, right, "free housing for all in the UK". Naive nutjobs, pure and simple.
Infrastructure: Online data from DoT on deficient bridges [dot.gov] shows steady improvement over the years. In thousands, the number of deficient bridges was 79 of 594 (2004), 72 of 601 (2008), 67 of 607 (2012) and 56 of 614 (2016). If that is indicative of the overall infrastructure (which I do not know), then the ASCE report should reflect that improvement. It doesn't...why?
Everyone is somebody else's weirdo.
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 17 2017, @09:08AM (4 children)
The word you meant to use is "Liberals".
For about the dozenth time in 48 hours, someone is describing Liberal Democracy and calling it by the wrong name.
Liberals think that Capitalism (and Oligarchy) is a workable system and that the redistribution of wealth after it is earned is a good idea.
The USA's Democrat Party is loaded with those types who think that top-down systems are OK.
Socialists, OTOH, being the owners of their companies ("the means of production"), are very aware of where money comes from.
They EARN it.
...and, BTW, they don't have non-productive people (Capitalists) skimming off profits.
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 17 2017, @10:08AM (3 children)
They have non-productive people (Socialists) skimming off profits instead.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 17 2017, @05:59PM (2 children)
Nope. You're talking about leeches and redistribution again.
Once more: That's Liberalism.
In USA, that means Democrats.
They are NOT Leftists.
They're on the Right-hand side of the political palate. [politicalcompass.org]
Socialism defined in 16 words
the extension of Democracy from politics to economics through collective ownership and workers' control of production [google.com]
Socialism defined in 13 words
social and economic decisions should be made by those whom they most affect [google.com]
Socialism defined in 6 Words
self-emancipation of the working class [google.com]
None of those include a mention of non-productive people.
Now, if you include the concept of "Everybody can do something useful for the society; let's make sure that we find that something for each individual" as well as "To each according to his need; from each according to his abilities", then you have Communism.
All Leftist philosophies start with the rights of Workers.
Nowhere in any of these is idleness considered normal and acceptable.
...much less skimming from a system into which you put no labor.
Your previous sources of "information" about "socialism" are crap.
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Monday April 17 2017, @08:00PM (1 child)
The problem for the socialistic ideas comes when labor is largely unnecessary for production. And if there's very low need of labor. Should there be a difference between people for their consumption when their contribution is redundant?
For the capitalistic sphere of ideas its much clearer. You can use the raw materials or production means you own as you see fit. No need to trade with anyone else unless you benefit. This will of course leave large groups of people without anything despite being educated and work capable.
The liberal view is the freedom of someone else enforcing what you can do or say. Not really about production means.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 17 2017, @09:04PM
Yeah. In France, they previously handled this by reducing the workweek to 35 hours.
A current Lefty candidate there has proposed further reducing that to 32 hours.
It will be interesting to see how he does in the election.
(He's VERY popular right now.)
Mondragon adapts to change by reassigning workers to divisions who haven't seen a downturn in labor requirements.
If necessary, they also reduce the number of hours each worker-owner works.
When societal stability and the wellbeing of ALL is the prime motivator and not maximizing the profits of a few, things can be a lot more humane.
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 1) by GreatOutdoors on Tuesday April 18 2017, @12:28AM
Really.. he has not been in office long enough to affect any major infrastructure projects and the libs want to immediately blame him. I saw zero change from the status quo in the last 8 years of obumma, so until you clean up your own back yard, stay the fuck out of mine.
Yes, I did make a logical argument there. You should post a logical response.