Our Failure To Invest In Infrastructure Is Actually Costing You Thousands

Our Failure To Invest In Infrastructure Is Actually Costing You Thousands

By NH LABOR NEWS

Wednesday May 18, 2016 · 7:00 PM CST

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Just drive down the road and you will quickly realize that our roads and bridges are in dire need of repair. However roads and bridges are not the only part of our crumbling infrastructure that needs to be addressed before its too late. Our infrastructure includes water, wastewater, electricity, airports, inland waterways & ports, and rail.
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“Infrastructure is the backbone of the U.S. economy and a necessary input to every economic output. It is critical to every nation’s prosperity and the public’s health and welfare,” wrote the American Society of Civil Engineers in their new study, Failure to Act: Closing the Infrastructure Investment Gap for America’s Future.

“Each Failure to Act study demonstrates that deteriorating infrastructure, long known to be a public safety issue, has a cascading impact on our nation’s economy, impacting business productivity, gross domestic product (GDP), employment, personal income, and international competitiveness,” ASCE added.

Failing to properly invest in maintaining and rebuilding our infrastructure is costing Americans thousands of dollars a year and it is about to get worse.

“From 2016 to 2025, each household will lose $3,400 each year in disposable income due to infrastructure deficiencies.” ASCE warned that if this infrastructure gap is not closed, by 2025, households would lose $5,100 annually and the economy could lose over $4 trillion in GDP.
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If we do not make the needed repairs today, they will ultimately cost us more in the future. It is the Republican led budget austerity that is leading us down this dangerous path. Since 2002, spending on roads and highways alone has fallen 23%. That is millions of dollars lost in our GDP and thousands of jobs lost, every year, by not investing in our future.

“America is currently spending more failing to act on our investment gap then we would to close it. Inefficient infrastructure is costing every household $9.30 a day. However, if every family instead invested an additional $3 a day per household, we could close the infrastructure investment gap in 10 years,” added ASCE.

“By increasing the investment by $144 billion a year for the next 10 years at the federal, state and local levels, we can upgrade our infrastructure, and protect our GDP, jobs, families’ disposable income and our nation’s competitiveness.”

America cannot wait any longer. The time is now.

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