During the first covid summer, with a friend, we studied two interesting points for the future: oil consumption relative to GDP (irrelevant here), and what is s

During the first covid summer, with a friend, we studied two interesting points for the future: oil consumption relative to GDP (irrelevant here), and what is sometime called demographic dividend, or how infrastructure spending during time of growth will allow an aging population an easier life in the future. Since we thought western countries to be all the same, we studied France and its infrastructure cost, then China, then the other Brics, plus Turkey and some ex-colonial nation that got f*cked off their own demographic dividend by the west. What we are sure off: maintenance is immensly cheaper than construction, three to five order of magnitude in most cases, and improvement upon existing infrastructure is one to two order of magnitude cheaper. From this, we also concluded that subsidizing an almost empty line on the west coast during more than twenty year actually was a net positive operation for the French government, and killing small train tracks is in 99% of case a mistake. My really friendly advice to americans, whatever their political leaning: do not kill your rail, improve on it even. This will be a net positive for your country, even if atm it seems like it is loosing you money. You can't afford to not maintain your infrastructure, or to forget about it.