by Michael Snyder, The Economic Collapse Blog:

Signs that we were once a truly great nation are all around us.  Previous generations of Americans handed us the keys to the most magnificent domestic infrastructure that the world had ever seen, but now it is literally falling apart all around us.  Thousands of bridges are structurally deficient and there have already been some very high profile collapses.  Hundreds of thousands of miles of highways and roads in the United States are in very poor shape.  Aging sewer systems are leaking raw sewage all over the place, and children are being slowly poisoned by lead pipes that desperately need to be replaced.  The power grid is hopelessly overloaded and is extremely vulnerable.  Meanwhile, our ports, our dams, our subway systems, our bus terminals and our airports are crumbling right in front of our eyes.  The truth is that our nation’s infrastructure says a lot about who we are.  So what does America’s crumbling infrastructure say about us?  Sadly, it says that we are a rusting, crumbling, decaying leftover from a better, more prosperous time.