{"id":7636,"date":"2015-05-25T12:36:52","date_gmt":"2015-05-25T16:36:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/philip.greenspun.com\/blog\/?p=7636"},"modified":"2015-05-25T12:36:52","modified_gmt":"2015-05-25T16:36:52","slug":"u-s-versus-german-infrastructure-spending-and-results","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/philip.greenspun.com\/blog\/2015\/05\/25\/u-s-versus-german-infrastructure-spending-and-results\/","title":{"rendered":"U.S. versus German infrastructure spending and results"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.wsj.com\/articles\/quality-not-just-quantity-of-infrastructure-needs-attention-1432138724\">&#8220;Quality, Not Just Quantity, of Infrastructure Needs Attention&#8221;<\/a> (<em>Wall Street Journal<\/em>, May 20, 2015) has some interesting data. The U.S. has spent, adjusted for deprecation, 52 percent of GDP on &#8220;public capital stock&#8221; (infrastructure such as roads, bridges, train tracks, etc.) while the Germans have spent just 35 percent of GDP. What results have been achieved? &#8220;global executives&#8221; rated the German infrastructure superior to that of the U.S.<\/p>\n<p>In other words the Germans are getting substantially better value for each public dollar invested.<\/p>\n<p>Why the constant calls by Americans to put more money into public infrastructure if it turns out this is not one of the things that we can do competitively?<\/p>\n<p>Related:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.bloombergview.com\/articles\/2012-09-28\/don-t-build-a-new-tappan-zee-bridge\">article comparing the inefficiency of New York&#8217;s Tappan Zee construction<\/a>\u00a0to a much more complex and longer bridge\/tunnel between Denmark and Sweden (the original Tappan Zee bridge cost about $500 million in today&#8217;s dollars (<a href=\"http:\/\/tappanzeebridge.lohud.com\/\">source<\/a>) while the new one will cost roughly 10 times that amount)<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/philip.greenspun.com\/blog\/2013\/08\/16\/cost-to-renovate-longfellow-bridge-compared-to-its-construction-cost\/\">previous posting on 4X cost increase between building the Longfellow Bridge in Boston and renovating it<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/philip.greenspun.com\/blog\/2014\/01\/06\/high-speed-rail-in-california-versus-china\/\">high-speed rail costs in China versus U.S.<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&#8220;Quality, Not Just Quantity, of Infrastructure Needs Attention&#8221; (Wall Street Journal, May 20, 2015) has some interesting data. The U.S. has spent, adjusted for deprecation, 52 percent of [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7636","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.2 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>U.S. versus German infrastructure spending and results - Philip Greenspun\u2019s Weblog<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/philip.greenspun.com\/blog\/2015\/05\/25\/u-s-versus-german-infrastructure-spending-and-results\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"U.S. versus German infrastructure spending and results - Philip Greenspun\u2019s Weblog\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"&#8220;Quality, Not Just Quantity, of Infrastructure Needs Attention&#8221; (Wall Street Journal, May 20, 2015) has some interesting data. 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