Americans, as a rule, are crap at taking care of what we have built. Be it a county court house to a school building to a bridge or a tunnel. We build stuff, neglect it, defer maintenence, and then wonder why it falls down 50 years later. Repair infrastructure.
@bradenslen @Cheri The US is not unique in having that national flaw 😔 It's a big problem in Australia as well. I think our governments have a preoccupation with "announceables" – spending on new things that they can get lots of photo ops with – there are no photo ops in maintaining railway lines, bridges or public housing so they do their best not to. Not to mention their apparent belief that one-off spending (new stuff) is fine but ongoing spending (maintenance) is somehow a drain on the budget…
@jayeless @Cheri While it gives me no pleasure that Australia has the same problem, there is some thin comfort to find out that the US is not alone. I think you are right as too the cause as well. A smaller factor might be that neither the US or Australia has a lot of really old man-built stuff like Europe and many parts of Asia has. We are young countries without a lot of built to really really last examples to inspire us: (eg. Roman roads, Great Walls, castles, cathedrals, temples.)
