But you're right; the US got overrun by nationalism post-9/11 which led to a feeling that because we were already the best, greatest, freest nation given to man by god -- and the rest of the world surpassed us in many ways.
For perspective, Clinton's campaign national infrastructure bill proposed spending $240B over 10 years, and a national high-speed rail network might cost around $500B. Those are huge expenditures, but they are investments in the American public.
War in the Middle East? Our money just goes up in smoke...
[1] Summary of Costs of the US Wars in Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan and Pakistan and Homeland Security: http://watson.brown.edu/costsofwar/files/cow/imce/papers/201...
It's just that the large infrastructure projects that can only be undertaken by government have gotten so paralyzed by special interests, that the stories just sound like anything you'd hear from developing nations with woefully corrupt governments. That billions of dollars were spent, there is literally NOTHING to show for it, AND nobody was punished either.
I say this living in an area (DC Metro) that now has gigabit fiber from the local telco. But I know our situation is rare.
I miss my FiOS - I don't miss the weather :-)
It's not just D.C. though. The whole surrounding area is pretty lax about development. The Chesapeake Bay area in Maryland is pretty rural, but also has fiber internet because ISPs are permitted to build where it's profitable to build.
The US is hardly the first nation to think that at the peak of its power and almost certainly won't be the last.
And then the baby boomers came along. And they have just cash cowed that infrastructure, not doing a good job maintaining it, not advancing it, letting it rot, while they pocket the benefit, stuffing it into the stock, bond, and real estate markets, benefiting really no one but themselves. They are a hoarding generation. And they seem fairly OK with a re-emergence of aristocracy as a result: I've got mine, you go get your own. Everything is a product. Rich people get more. Cooperation is socialism. Etc.
So it'll be up to gen X and millenials to decide what comes next.
To be fair to Boomers and contrary to the popular current Boomers.v. Millenials (with Gen X occasionally acknowledged) narrative, the effects you describe began under the social, economic, and political dominance of the “Greatest” Generation, not the boomers.
Further, it's not really a generational thing, it's about shifting distribution of power among economic classes over time; which generation is ascendant at the time isn't the controlling factor, and generation v. generation narrative obstructs the kind of coalition building that could work to reverse the problem.
I don't know if we can just blame baby boomers, unless somehow they were responsible for voting all the current politicians in.
The scary part is when I read about the roaring 20s. It reminds me of many of my experiences in silicon valley.
I often wonder, if the market crashes again will we be in another great depression that leads us to ww3.
It's still unclear that we would need another one. Going by the WWII timeline, the invasion of Poland would be roughly in the next year.
Could you elaborate a bit on that?
Also, broadband and high speed rail are infinitely easier when the landmass is over 15-40x smaller and population density 2-10x greater than the US.
Our medical care system sucks though - service is excellent, costs are not.
No, the US has MUCH worse food safety standards than the EU for example. I am tired of reading articles about all kinds of toxins and carcinogens that are byproducts of mass production, that are allowed by the FDA in "small quantities" but are completely banned in the EU. Same goes for food labeling.
Update: Regarding high speed rail and density, it should actually be the opposite. The hard part of building something like HSR is getting the correct permits and buying land, not just the construction. With the US being so spread out, there's fewer parties to negotiate land purchases from.
The U.S. is unusual in making telecom construction and licensing a largely municipal issue, which subjects it to local NIMBY-ism. Philadelphia, D.C., New York, Atlanta, Chicago, Austin, etc., have broadband that's quite competitive with Europe. They also tend to be places that are laissez faire in general about development in general. The Bay Area, in contrast, is anti-development about everything, apparently including broadband. There's a reason Google chose to build fiber in Atlanta, but not in its own back yard.
My favorite thing to do when I visit a different country is tour the grocery store. I compare the price of milk, bread, eggs, cheese, and beef.
In Italy and London I have found that similar quality products are much more expensive usually. However the stores caring more high quality local foods, and less of the cheap processed foods that we American's love.
Lower life expectancy suggests the service isn't that excellent.
Growing up in India, we used to read and see stories about the West (Europe and the US) and were just amazed at what can be done with infrastructure if the people and government had the will to do so.
Now, I've lived in the US for 23 years, and I look longingly elsewhere at Europe and Asia to see what can be done with infrastructure if the people and government had the will to do so. From broadband, to high speed rail, to public transportation, to food safety, to medical care.
The problem is, as a population, we still haven't come to terms that we're slipping behind badly. We just say "but, but, silicon valley!" or "but we innovate!" and move on.