Will War Spending Mean Less For Infrastructure?

Borosage says that the troop surge announcement gave him a "haunting foreboding" about the decline of America. Imperial nations, he writes, squander their money on wars; productive societies invest in their own economies and infrastructure. And with the nation's debt ballooning, how will both 'guns and butter' be paid for? He adds,

"The collapse of revenues at the state and local level will force states to make cuts and layoffs that are projected to cost another 900,000 jobs over the next year. But more aid to the states and localities, unpopular in the polls, is apparently not on the president's agenda. Anyone traveling in America runs into the growing costs of our aging and outmoded infrastructure - from collapsing bridges to exploding sewer pipes, to slow trains on bad tracks, to schools in such disrepair that they pose dangers to the students. But a bold program of investment in our infrastructure is considered a bridge too far.

This is a very rich country, despite the years of conservative misrule. But even wealthy countries must choose."