File this picture from yesterday’s major water-main break in DC’s Dupont Circle neighborhood in the “Critical Infrastructure Investment Required” category:

Coincedentally timed with the arrival of February’s Atlantic containing this reminder from James Fallows:

“Stephen Flynn points out that the physical infrastructure of big East Coast cities was mainly built by the 1880s; of the industrial Midwest by World War I; and of the West Coast by 1960. “It was advertised to last 50 years, and overengineered so it might last 100,” he said. “Now it’s running down. When a pothole swallows an SUV, it’s treated as freak news, but it shows a water system that’s literally collapsing beneath us.” (Surface cave-ins often reflect a sewer or water line that has leaked or collapsed below.)”

DC’s water main system was constructed in 1877. I suppose investing in fixing it would be “wasteful government spending” of some kind or other.