Discussion: Infrastructure renewals

But the pot holes might be indicative of a failure to invest in infrastructure in general, which is probably as responsible for the hurricane damage as the storm itself. Seems to the be good old US way of doing public business.

New Orleans was particularly notorious for poor local infrastructure and services - for example, the school system went bankrupt in 2004 and most of the teachers didn't get paid for several months (which may explain why most of them got jobs elsewhere given the opportunity, and didn't come back). In general it seems to me that in the American system local governments have a lot of responsibilities over things that in Australia would be done by the states, but they lack the power (or the resources) to carry them out.