As students in the Vanderbilt community prepare to fly home for the holidays, they can look forward to flight delays, cancellations and missed connections caused by crowded runways and an inefficient, decades-old navigation system. The airlines have not kept up with the times, and society is paying for it. But the air travel industry isn’t the only one with infrastructure problems. Any number of sectors—power, telecommunications, public safety, public transportation, education—are not receiving adequate attention, enough funding or proper regulation from the government. These days, this country seems unwilling to make large expenditures on the infrastructure improvements that are necessary for continued economic growth. The bridge collapse in Minnesota this past August was a tragic reminder of the dangers associated with growing complacent in replacing and updating vital infrastructure components. Physical danger aside, there is a large negative economic impact of using out-of-date technology in public industries. Every extra hour spent sitting in an airport is an hour of wasted productivity. Our telecommunications infrastructure is behind that of countries like Japan, which has eight million households with fiber optic connections. France leads us in power generation—75% of their electricity is generated with nuclear power, giving them a large level of energy independence, low costs and very low carbon gas emissions. The United States is also behind in education, which threatens our nation’s future ability to innovate and compete in global markets. On the flip side, the benefits of some of our well-maintained infrastructures are enormous. Just look at the Interstate Highway System, which has been developed over a period of half a century at a cost in the hundreds of billions of dollars. Interstates now form the backbone of domestic commerce, enabling easy and fast mass transportation of goods across the country. It was a visionary plan, and has played a major role in helping America to achieve its current level of prosperity. Major infrastructure decisions cannot be left entirely up to the whims of private industry. For proof, just look at the airlines. Despite the fact that the industry is competitive, delays are still a chronic problem for every single carrier. Government funding of infrastructure is needed when market forces break down and when there are external benefits to infrastructure (such as cleaner air or a more educated society) that cannot be captured by a private company. With new technologies like fuel cell cars just over the horizon, it’s important for the United States to reevaluate the role of government in infrastructure development. Honda has already produced a fuel cell car (the FCX Clarity) that is production ready, but will never be able to begin mass production without an infrastructure for distributing hydrogen fuel. Now, I’m not recommending that we go off and spend billions of dollars subsidizing infrastructure for every new technology that pops up, but we should send the message to companies and entrepreneurs that we are at least open to supporting new innovations that require large-scale investment. As Americans we often take our country’s infrastructure for granted, but we can no longer afford to take that approach. The industrial and technological backbone of the country must keep pace with innovation, or we will put the future of America’s economic growth at risk.