Yes and no. The US is rich enough to where, yes, we could raise taxes and fund infrastructure better.
At the same time, some forms of infrastructure have been over-built. We've demonstrated a massive preference for (wide) roads over walking/biking/transit, and it turns out supporting mostly single-occupancy vehicles as the default transportation mode is extremely expensive.
For example, take this blog post analyzing why a poor area of town is a better revenue generator than a more affluent area; part of the reason is that the older, poorer area just has narrower roads, which reduced upkeep costs: https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2017/1/10/poor-neighborh...
It should go without saying, but having low-density design throughout our country drastically raises infrastructure costs. The roads needs to be longer (and wider), you need more miles of pipes, and electric wire, and fiber, etc.
If that's true, what is the reason? Is it because roads are public spending and not private development?
I guess I do have to clarify that saying we can or can't afford it is overloaded. We may have the money to do it and still not be able to afford it for a variety of reasons including politics and higher priorities. I think it's fair to say we can't afford it when we have debt and we're not fixing the problem. All the money we have is currently going to other things.
So how do we make money fixing it? If we would make money, why are we falling behind rather than getting ahead, if it was such a clear win economically, why aren't we doing it already?
This article implies that our current annual rate of return on highways is less than 10%:
FWIW, I also think it's fairly easy to look at the actual scale of existing infrastructure and come to the conclusion that the magnitude of the problem isn't something that billions or a trillion dollars will put a real dent in; it looks bigger than that to me just looking at these maps:
> FWIW, I also think it's fairly easy to look at the actual scale of existing infrastructure and come to the conclusion that the magnitude of the problem isn't something that billions or a trillion dollars will put a real dent in; it looks bigger than that to me just looking at these maps:
Those maps don't include America's water infrastructure, which is in need of a serious overhaul. The American Water Works Association estimates that the cost of restoring underground pipes will total at least $1 trillion over the next 25 years, without including the cost of constructing new infrastructure or repairing treatment plants.
Expense is not the reason the US has infrastructure problems.