With America facing a $1.6 trillion infrastructure deficit, Joanna Guldi of the Commonweal Institute laments for the era the "infrastructure state."
"Most Americans alive today grew up in an era when state infrastructure was on the rise."
"That phase of building was associated with a 200-year trend in politics, in which infrastructure became the favorite experiment of expanding nations."
"The infrastructure state, however, is no more a reality; it has been dramatically eroded by the postwar politics of suspicion. One element was a reaction against centralized states in general, which began as a rejection of contemporary dictatorships, and culminated in theories hostile to any type of centralized management whatsoever. In 1957, political scientist Karl Wittfogel argued that "hydraulic societies" of state-built dams were institutions of "oriental despotism." A second element of the reaction was shortsightedly financial: The cost of FDR's government was provoking hostile reactions and cutbacks across those years; issues of obvious social justice like welfare and housing attracted more popular support and discussion than the relative fortunes of rich and poor riparians."
FULL STORY: We've Got to Rebuild America's Crumbling Infrastructure
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