How U.S. Infrastructure Crumbled

"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."