Originally Posted by sxecrow
Sure there is. The US spends an ungodly amount of money in military spending and intelligence. Our spending is far far far far far beyond everyone else. The next highest is like 15x less in what we spend. I know the need for military spending and intelligence is important, but if we took 5% ... just 5% of what we spend on military budget, we would have a drastic improvement on our roads, schools, etc.
Actually because our interstate highway system was originally designed to support troop movements...
While Ike was commanding the Allied forces in Europe during World War II, he saw how efficiently and easily Germans could move their troops on their sophisticated Autobahns, and dreamed of replicating this new idea in America.
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The federal government footed the first 90% to construct the roads. Now it is left up to the state governements to maintain, however there is no federal standards of maintenence and many rodas and bridges are in dire need of repair or updating. A standard for the states to confirm to would be good but tough to enforce. A better idea is to follow what the Europeans do and nationalize the interstate system and charge a yearly per-car tax to drive on the roads so each car needs a sticker to drive on the highways. That money would then be used to maintain the roads.