> The growth Ponzi scheme hypothesis says that the source of America's infrastructure problems is subsidies from higher levels of governments (e.g., federal) to lower levels (e.g., cities) for infrastructure.

This is pretty clearly false; the main cause of infrastructure maintenance neglect is that politicians, like many leaders in other fields, get more career boost from new projects than making sure existing things are maintained. That's true from top to bottom.

There's policy contributions (e.g., California Prop. 13 makes local jurisdictions dependent on development fees and other growth-related revenue because property taxes are limited to a low nominal level and decline in real terms as property is held because of the limitations on assessed value increases to significantly below the historical average rate of inflation), but new-project subsidies aren't a root cause but a symptom of the cause which would exist even without the subsidies.