Crumbling Infrastructure Symbolizes U.S. Economy

The following commentary comes from an independent investor or market observer as part of TheStreet's guest contributor program, which is separate from the company's news coverage.

NEW YORK (Bullion Bulls Canada) -- Like most people, I was already aware that the infrastructure of the United States was rapidly decaying. However, seeing some hard numbers actually quantifying the severity of this problem was nothing less than shocking.

Remember all of that "infrastructure spending" which was (supposedly) part of the stimulus package, which in turn supposedly led to a "U.S. economic recovery"? It never happened. Just like the supposed "recovery" itself, it was nothing but smoke and mirrors. No recovery, no investment in infrastructure. Only the debts from all that "stimulus" were real.

In fact, while the U.S. government was pretending to be attending to its neglected infrastructure, the U.S.'s global ranking for the quality of its infrastructure was plummeting lower. A Reuters article reveals that in a mere four years (from 2007 to 2011) the U.S.'s ranking fell from 6 to 16.

Keep in mind that building infrastructure is a slow, long-term commitment. Thus, being able to fall ten places in this ranking in a mere four years is a mind-numbing demonstration of negligence and mismanagement. To suffer a plunge of this magnitude while claiming to be focusing on infrastructure investment is an indictment of the saturation level of deceit of this government. Obviously, it's only a matter of time until more U.S. bridges start falling down.

U.S. government negligence in this area appears even more appalling when compared to other parts of the world. While the U.S. propaganda machine continues pummeling Europe with its fear hype over the "euro debt crisis," Europe is currently investing a robust 5% of its GDP in infrastructure -- more than double the paltry 2% spent by the U.S. And this is not a new trend. Infrastructure investment in the U.S. hasn't risen above 2% of GDP for more than 30 years.

The European statistic can be viewed in two ways. For those with a bullish outlook, Europe is literally "paving the way" for future economic growth with this high level of infrastructure investment. For the bearish, this high level of investment represents an area where large budget cuts can be achieved without immediately impacting the level of public services. Thus (at least in this one respect), European "austerity" is not an exercise in inevitable economic suicide.