[refurb]

Transportation infrastructure spending at the federal level is currently 3%.[1] You could always argue that is low due to a lack of investment, but it pales in comparison to federal entitlement spending (59%).

I'd be much more worried about the tax burden due to entitlement spending than I would about transportation infrastructure.

[1]http://www.cbpp.org/research/policy-basics-where-do-our-fede...

[toomuchtodo]

The highway trust fund goes broke this month:

http://www.transportation.gov/highway-trust-fund-ticker

It would cost $3.6 trillion to bring infrastructure back up to par:

http://www.wired.com/2015/01/time-fix-americas-infrastructur...

> Unfortunately, highway fund revenues have been insufficient to fully fund existing highway spending, with Congress authorizing billions of dollars in transfers from the US Treasury’s General Fund into the Highway Trust Fund to keep it solvent, including a $10.8 billion transfer last August. It has ongoing funding needs that will continue unless a more permanent solution can be found, either by raising the national gas tax (which hasn’t been increased since 1993), or some other funding measure. The Congressional Budget Office expects the Highway Trust Fund to have an annual shortfall of $15 billion.

[orbifold]

Gasoline prices in the US are very low compared to what you pay in Europe, maybe if the government increased the taxation of gasoline they could make up for that shortfall. In Germany they added ~17 billion to the budget that way per year since 1999. With the usage pattern in the US you could probably make significantly more.

[toomuchtodo]

I don't disagree. We should be raising taxes on fuel to pay for infrastructure, but people are stupid and politicians prefer to stay in office, so raising taxes is verboten.

[superuser2]

The social good supported by entitlement spending is sick people not dying and poor people not starving or being homeless.

The social "good" supported by highways is geographical separation between the middle class and the poor (which largely means the white and everyone else.)

[kps]

  > which largely means the white and everyone else.

Ah, that explains why highways only exist in the United States.

[superuser2]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_flight#Roads

[betenoire]

> AND everyone else

They weren't saying what you are suggesting they were saying.

[CamperBob2]

Wow.