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[quote user="Phoebe Vet"] From that article: "The United States has fallen sharply in the World Economic Forum's ranking of national infrastructure systems in recent years. In its 2007-2008 report, U.S. infrastructure ranked sixth in the world, but fell to 16th in the 2011-2012 report." The world is moving on without us. [/quote] Cross country comparisons are challenging.  First up is foreign exchange.  It fluctuates daily.  Moreover, the fluctuations are compounded by foreign exchange swaps. Translating the off shore values to dollars is a mind bending exercise. Second, European countries, as well as many Asian and Latin American countries, use International Accounting Standards (IAS) whereas the United States follows Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP). Again, ironing out the differences is challenging.  Lastly, there is the ugly problem of producer price parity, i.e. equalizing the features in each capital project, equipment, operation, etc. so that one is comparing apples to apples and not oranges to apples. I would like to see the methodologies used to reach the aforementioned comparisons.  Again, the key question is whether America's infrastructure meets its needs.  To be sure we have problems.  But they are being addressed. As I noted in a previous post, the American Society of Civil Engineers issued a report a year or so ago stating amongst other things that 26% of America's bridges were restricted or obsolete.  However, it turns out that 11% of the bridges are restricted and 15% are obsolete.  What does obsolete mean?  It means, according to the report, that if the engineers where building the bridge today, they would not use the same design.  OK, so maybe there are better designs.  But that does not mean that the bridge is not functional or needs to be replaced.  Oh, did I mention, the American Society of Civil Engineers has a vested interest in more infrastructure spending.  It seems that a significant portion of its members make a living via infrastructure building and maintenance.  Who would have ever guessed? Another issue is the numerator/denominator problem. If one has a high denominator, then a large increase in the numerator will appear as a small per cent increase.  On the other hand, if the denominator is relatively small, i.e. the country has the larges capitalized infrastructure in the world, the largest absolute increase in the numerator would still come across as a relatively per cent increase.
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