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Interested in history, politics, science, social science, and the like. Featured on MSNBC 🔎🤔📈🧐😄

Feb 22, 2023, 17 tweets

1/THREAD How true are narratives of America's infrastructure collapsing, and America falling apart?

2/As @ElonBachman has shown train derailments are up slightly over the past decade, but fatalities are down:

3/Plane crashes are down over the past couple of decades: psbr.law/aviation_accid…

4/ However as @Steve_Sailer has pointed out this is not true with car crash fatalities, which were flat for most of the past decade and shot up in 2020: valuepenguin.com/car-accident-s…

5/ Not directly relating to infrastructure but how we use it, commute time increased from 1980 to 2020: washingtonpost.com/business/2019/…

6/ There doesn't seem to be a clear increase in flight delays over the past decade (or cancellations, also in the article): valuepenguin.com/travel/delays-…

7/ In 2021 US received a grade of C- for our infrastructure, the highest we have received in 20 years, roads and bridges seem to be improving in quality: archive.is/8fteR

8/ Oil spills from tankers seem to have been decreasing for the past couple of decades: ourworldindata.org/oil-spills

9/Power outages do seem to be increasing: cnn.com/2022/09/14/us/…

10/ The work related injury has been flat for about a decade, though there was a notable increase in 2021: injuryfacts.nsc.org/work/work-over…

11/ Is food-borne illness increasing? motherjones.com/kevin-drum/201…

12/ Watermain breaks seem to be going up at least over a short period. From 2018: "Overall, break rates have increased 27 percent in the past six" years.waterfm.com/study-water-ma…

13/ Quality of drinking water over time: theconversation.com/the-us-drinkin…

14/ Trend in New York subway delays: nytimes.com/interactive/20…

15/ Overall investment in infrastructure has been 2% of GDP for decades, down from 3% of GDP in mid 20th century. (keep in mind the US has gotten richer) cbpp.org/research/state…

16/ This was just a cursory look, if you have additional relevant data please let me know. Some things are better some are worse, I don't see much to support the narrative of collapse.

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