China's going to have a hell of a time maintaining all this infrastructure they're building in a few decades. Maintaining things currently in use is a lot harder than building new, just ask the US.
And are you talking about unemployed people? How is that connected?
What does that mean in practice? Something to do with taxes and income distribution? Also, where could I find research supporting it?
The OP's statement is insightful. Narrowing its scope to prove a tangential point is not.
True, the idle rich have demanded appeasement in the form of lower taxes at the expense of many things - including infrastructure maintenance.
A point well-made!
I guess getting money for maintenance is politically harder, and saying "hey, we have this well maintained infrastructure" is much less impressive than "hey, we built this impressive new piece of infrastructure".
Vietnam seems particularly bad for it. They have some very nice new roads, but after a few years they're filled with potholes and an absolute pain to drive/ride through. It doesn't help that they aren't actually that well built either. They look nice when new, but there's actually very little under the tarmac, so when monsoon season comes through the roads just wash out.
Becamex IDC is a company founded in 1976 to build a whole city north of Saigon in Binh Duong. There is nice wide and well-paved roads, sidewalks, schools, multiple golf courses, churches, car dealerships, hospitals, power plants... it is literally sim city in real life. The only twist is that it is still nearly empty. The only people out there are factory workers. The factories even import managers from Korea and Japan, who spend their days playing at the golf courses. The locals either live in factory housing or in really inexpensive places. There is whole communities of housing built up where only a few people live. It is kind of amazing really... the whole country is full of half finished places like this.
https://i.imgur.com/GIPMBmT.png
https://i.imgur.com/LRVIX7h.png
My guess is that when the sea levels rise and Saigon is under water, Binh Duong will be hot property... in 100 years.
Not so hard if the govn't simply crackdown Unions and worker protests.
And tolls for every new road.
Don't generalize the problem to include the whole world when it only affects one country.
I agree with you, it is a joke.
This common self-hating American idea that only the US is doing it wrong is always funny.