It’s been obvious for a while that America, once the nation of heroic infrastructure, has become the place that can’t build stuff — the place whose greatest city continues to rely on a century-old tunnel under the Hudson, and can’t muster the political will to build another.

What I didn’t realize is that failure to build applies to small-scale projects too. Michael Mandel says, “If things feel more decrepit and worn-out these days, it’s because they are.” And he has a chart:

We’re becoming shabbier by the year.