Whether it’s the roads we drive on, the pipes carrying our water, or the power lines humming with the electricity that lights our homes, America’s physical networks are falling apart. That’s bad news for those of us spending hours a day in traffic caused by road-repair bottlenecks, or sweating through prolonged summer blackouts. But it’s also a substantial drag on our economy and on our businesses. And it will be a competitive challenge for this country in the years to come. Infrastructure - the catchall term for the backbone of our nation - is the kind of word that makes taxpayers want to roll over, hit the snooze button and go back to sleep. We ignore it and only complain when something breaks. No dummies, our lawmakers react accordingly. They approach the underpinnings of our nation’s future like school nurses, applying the equivalent of Band-Aids and aspirin. Unfortunately, what ails Uncle Sam’s body is much more than nicks and bruises and there are no short-term remedies, much less miracle elixirs. It takes years to lay a comprehensive network of fiber-optic cable or dig a tunnel through bedrock. By the time we notice how bad things have gotten, […]