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U.S. infrastructure gets a D+
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Global spending on infrastructure increased 4.5 percent last year led by a 7 percent rise in the Asia/Pacific region and a 1.5 percent jump in Europe.
Like Europe, the U.S. is also on the low end of the scale. A recent report from the American Society of Civil Engineers gives the nation's infrastructure a D+, up from a its previous grade of a D in 2009.
Marketplace Economics Correspondent Chris Farrell joins Morning Report host Jeremy Hobson to discuss the state of infrastructure in the U.S. and whether the country can afford to improve it.
You know, I appreciate snark at the government's expense as much as the next person. But that snark really ought to be accurately aimed, no?
Chris Farrell -- like 1,000 economists before him -- seems to think that American can't afford to NOT fix its infrastructure. He agrees with the ASCE (among many others) that it is failing miserably across the nation. He also rightly recommends that we invest in it now, while costs of doing business are still at historical lows.
Funnily enough, those are precisely the same points that President Obama has made in SOTU speeches and elsewhere FOR THE LAST FIVE YEARS. In fact, you could argue that one reason our grade rose a tick from D to D+ since the last ASCE report 4 years ago was the spending our state governments did on infrastructure in 2009-11-- thanks largely to the Obama stimulus.
So when Farell and Hobson go on to tar all of "government" for being too stupid to follow Farrell's/ASCE's/economists' advice to spend on infrastructure now, they are painting their snark with far too wide a brush.
HAVE THE COURAGE TO CALL IT LIKE IT IS, GENTS: It is only Republicans in Congress, frothing at the mouth about debt when our country is still mired in quasi-recession, who are preventing any and all new appropriations for infrastructure (or anything else). One comparative look at the budgets just produced by the Republican House and the Democratic Senate will show you that.
And it isn't "bias" to point this out!!! It's just probative comment based on actual facts.
Hmmmm . . . in school I learned that that was called "journalism."
