Fear of spending is at the root of America’s infrastructure problem

It has been said before, in many ways, by leaders of both parties. We don’t build infrastructure in America, at least not at the pace and scale that we used to. Not like we built the transcontinental railroad. Not like we built the interstate highway system. It’s true: as a percentage of our gross national product, America’s infrastructure spending lags both its history and the current pace of other industrialized nations.

This is exacerbated by the fact that many elements of our infrastructure inventory have aged past their useful lives and are functioning antiques at best, like the original New York City water system; national embarrassments, like most of our airports; or accidents waiting to happen, like so many bridges and roadbeds ready to give way.

{mosads}By the mid-20th century, America had no reason for shame. Our infrastructure was world class and largely ahead of the demand. So governments slowed spending. But the current state of disrepair and underinvestment has been apparent for at least a couple of decades. Why haven’t we gotten back to work? The problem starts with a reluctance to spend.

This challenge predates the Tea Party, whose anti-spending fervor killed projects around the country as elected officials echoed Sarah Palin’s battle cry at the 2008 Republican National Convention of “thanks, but no thanks” while telling her personal myth of halting a wasteful “bridge to nowhere.” This “just say no” attitude towards infrastructure and other spending emerged as a basic piece of red state politics.

Why don’t some red state voters think governments need to spend money on infrastructure? It’s not as though they are against every category of government spending. These voters generally support increased defense spending, increased indirect spending in the form of tax subsidies to support blue collar jobs, and even spending for a massive wall along the Mexican border — perhaps the only new infrastructure spending program to have majority support from these voters. The answer can be found in the rural-urban divide that increasingly defines American politics.

If you live in rural American, water probably comes from a well beside your house and sewage flows into the septic tank in your yard. While your life may depend upon infrastructure installed a few decades ago, perhaps under President Roosevelt’s Works Progress Administration, you have no pressing need for more or better. The local airport is adequate, if a little shabby, for a few domestic flights a year, if you ever fly at all.

Most infrastructure spending is needed in urban and suburban areas, which makes sense because that is where the majority of Americans live, where the population is growing and where most of the nation’s economic activity occurs. But that is a complete abstraction for many Americans living far away in the rural parts of our country.

Cities may be seen not as economic engines of the nation but as teeming dens of crime, breeding grounds of radicalization, ghettos where drug use is the norm, and where “normal Americans” have no place. Some rural voters may not support infrastructure spending because they don’t support urban America.

The coming debate about infrastructure spending is a fight against diversity and against urbanization. It is a struggle to lead America to a mirage that is an echo of its past, to a rural, agricultural, and outmoded manufacturing economy past.

But the future lies is in and around cities, in a well-educated workforce that is rich from diversity, and in vibrant communities that are bound together by the basic elements that government spending has historically provided, including first-class infrastructure.

Both rural and urban America can and should be great. But as long as an anti-spending sentiment continues to dominate our political system, our country’s basic transportation, water, and energy systems will continue to decay, while we make no new investments in core social infrastructure like public education and cultural institutions. The American experiment will fail, the victim of a self-inflicted wound.

Joel Moser is the founder and chief executive officer of Aquamarine Investment Partners, a global real asset investor, and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. He also teaches infrastructure development and finance practices at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs.  

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