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The Sad State of America’s Infrastructure in One Infographic

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Every year, Americans spend a combined 600,000 years stuck in traffic.

If you’re thinking that time could be spent a little more productively, you’re not the only one.

In fact, even politicians are taking notice of aging and insufficient infrastructure in the United States. Recently, President Trump has started mapping out his $1 trillion plan to rebuild the country’s roads, bridges, and airports – and it is worth mentioning that infrastructure spending was also a key component of Bernie Sanders’ platform as well.

A Look at America’s Infrastructure

Today’s infographic is from HighTide Technologies, and it dives into the infrastructure situation in the United States, including a comparison of federal and state spending.

The Sad State of America's Infrastructure

According to the American Society of Civil Engineers, the United States currently has an “infrastructure gap”. If the discrepancy is not closed between what needs to be invested in infrastructure and what is actually invested, it could ultimately create a $4 trillion drag on GDP by 2025.

As a result, between 2016 and 2025, each American household will lose $3,400 in disposable income due to infrastructure inefficiencies.

What Needs To Be Fixed?

Should money go to roadways, airports, water systems, broadband networks, or rail?

The biggest challenge facing America’s infrastructure problem is where to get the biggest ROI from infrastructure investments. Putting a trillion dollars towards problems that don’t really exist would be a catastrophic failure to everyone involved, with the exception of any crony capitalists that find a way to profit.

One viewpoint on this again comes from the American Society of Civil Engineers: they figure that by 2020, the U.S. needs to put $1.7 trillion towards roads, bridges and transit, $736 billion to electricity and power grids, $391 billion towards schools, $134 billion to airports, and $131 billion to waterways and related projects.

But even with these kinds of targets in place, how the decisions are actually made is another potential issue. Infrastructure investments are notoriously hard to gauge and often run overbudget. They are also capital-intensive, constrained by regulations, and disrupting to daily life at a local level, where the investments are being made.

Trump’s current plan is to provide $137 billion in tax credits to create incentives for private industry to spend the dough – but it remains to be seen how this will play out to mitigate the above risks, while solving the most important problems at both state and local levels.

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Politics

How Much Do Americans Trust the Media?

Media trust among Americans has reached its lowest point since Trump won the 2016 presidential election.

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How Much Do Americans Trust the Media?

Media trust among Americans has reached its lowest point in six years.

Gallup began its survey on media trust in 1972, repeating it in 1974 and 1976. After a long period, the public opinion firm restarted the polls in 1997 and has asked Americans about their confidence level in the mass media—newspapers, TV, and radio—almost every year since then.

The above graphic illustrates Gallup’s latest poll results, conducted in September 2023.

Americans’ Trust in Mass Media, 1972-2023

Americans’ confidence in the mass media has sharply declined over the last few decades.

Trust in the mass media% Great deal/Fair amount% Not very much% None at all
197268246
197469218
197672224
1997533115
199855359
1999553411
2000513712
2001533314
2002543511
2003543511
2004443916
2005503712
2007473517
2008433521
2009453718
2010433621
2011443619
2012403921
2013443322
2014403624
2015403624
2016324127
2017412929
2018453024
2019413028
2020402733
2021362934
2022342838
2023322939

In 2016, the number of respondents trusting media outlets fell below the tally of those who didn’t trust the media at all. This is the first time that has happened in the poll’s history.

That year was marked by sharp criticism of the media from then-presidential candidate Donald Trump.

In 2017, the use of the term ‘fake news’ rose by 365% on social media, and the term was named the word of the year by dictionary publisher Collins.

The Lack of Faith in Institutions and Social Media

Although there’s no single reason to explain the decline of trust in the traditional media, some studies point to potential drivers.

According to Michael Schudson, a sociologist and historian of the news media and a professor at the Columbia Journalism School, in the 1970s, faith in institutions like the White House or Congress began to decline, consequently impacting confidence in the media.

“That may have been a necessary corrective to a sense of complacency that had been creeping in—among the public and the news media—that allowed perhaps too much trust: we accepted President Eisenhower’s lies about the U-2 spy plane, President Kennedy’s lies about the ‘missile gap,’ President Johnson’s lies about the war in Vietnam, President Nixon’s lies about Watergate,”
Michael Schudson – Columbia Journalism School

More recently, the internet and social media have significantly changed how people consume media. The rise of platforms such as X/Twitter and Facebook have also disrupted the traditional media status quo.

Partisans’ Trust in Mass Media

Historically, Democrats have expressed more confidence in the media than Republicans.

Democrats’ trust, however, has fallen 12 points over the past year to 58%, compared with 11% among Republicans and 29% among independents.

How-Much-Do-Americans-Trust-the-Media

According to Gallup, Republicans’ low confidence in the media has little room to worsen, but Democrat confidence could still deteriorate and bring the overall national reading down further.

The poll also shows that young Democrats have less confidence in the media than older Democrats, while Republicans are less varied in their views by age group.

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