Some politicians look for ways to justify diverting certain portions of the budget earmarked for improvement of roads and bridges to other purposes. This undermining of social overhead capital by politicians serves as a warning about Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's policy of promoting public works projects in a bid to reinforce and safeguard decaying infrastructure throughout the county.
In his 2010 book titled "Too Big to Fall: America's Falling Infrastructure and the Way Forward," written after a number of roads and bridges collapsed in the United States in the 2000s, Barry R. LePatner argues that U.S. social overhead capital as a whole faces a critical danger as many politicians seek to garner votes in their constituencies by promising new construction projects, rather than undertake much-needed repair of existing structures.
In Japan, the ruling Liberal Democratic Party plans to submit to the current session of the Diet a bill to reinforce the nation's infrastructure. On Jan. 11, the government adopted an emergency economic stimulus package totaling ¥20.2 trillion, including ¥3.8 trillion for making the country resilient to natural calamities.
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