“When it comes to roads, bridges, and airports, America is a Third World country.” — Jim Rogers, “Street Smarts”

The August 29, 2015, issue of The Economist lambasted the West, and the United States in particular, for failing to address a ticking time bomb — rebuilding its roads, bridges, airports and other infrastructure when interest rates are low.

The Economist states, “IT IS hard to exaggerate the decrepitude of infrastructure in much of the rich world. One in three railway bridges in Germany is over 100 years old, as are half of London’s water mains. In America the average bridge is 42 years old and the average dam 52. The American Society of Civil Engineers rates around 14,000 of the country’s dams as ‘high hazard’ and 151,238 of its bridges as ‘deficient.’ This crumbling infrastructure is both dangerous and expensive: traffic jams on urban highways cost America over $100 billion in wasted time and fuel each year; congestion at airports costs $22 billion and another $150 billion is lost to power outages.”

According to The Economist, it will take $15 trillion-$20 trillion by 2030 to rebuild the West‘s infrastructure. Right now, we are spending 2.5% of gross domestic product (GDP) on capital investment in buildings, roads, bridges, railroads and airports. We should be spending at least 3.5% of GDP.