Via Michael Roberts' blog
America's infrastructure is literally falling apart,according to the American Society of Civil Engineers.
The American Society of Civil Engineers yesterday projected a $1.44tn investment funding gap between 2016 and 2025, warning of a mounting drag on business activity, exports and incomes.
Without radical surgery, the decay in tunnels, railways and waterways will cost the US economy nearly $4tn in lost gross domestic product by 2025 as costs rise and productivity is impeded, according to estimates from the ASCE, dragging on a recovery in output that is the shallowest since the end of the second world war.
Inadequate infrastructure is far from unique to the US. Public investment has been trending lower as a share of GDP in economies including Japan, Germany and France in recent decades.
The debate is being inflamed by a number of scandals involving decaying infrastructure, at a time when mounting demands are being placed on it by a population set to grow by 60m over the next 25 years.
Last year US public capital investment, which includes infrastructure, was just 3.4 per cent of GDP, or $611bn, according to the president’s Council of Economic Advisers — the lowest in more than 60 years.
For more on the failure of capitalist investment in basic infrastructure needs, see my post.
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