You know, I used to think this. Then I discovered how quickly Caltrans was able to fix that tank truck destruction of the highway in the East Bay. And then I looked at the stuff and realized something: America doesn't actually need the infrastructure. It's all a jobs program. Because when America needs it, it comes fast as fuck. But the truth is that America doesn't need it. You don't need high-speed rail (planes are better). You don't need that road to be resurfaced (the loss of life and property over the period in question is minuscule). You don't need the Central Railway. You don't need more interstates. It's okay to allow some bridges to fall killing some people.

Almost all American infrastructure is either a vanity project, a jobs project, or a political quid pro quo operation to an ally to get some other thing done.

The problem is that once you get really used to this mode of operating, you kind of forget that there are sometimes things that really do matter. I think America has a picture of the things she already knows of: crucial highway collapses? gotta fix now! But the ability to recognize new crises goes away without novel crises.

So America can't build ventilators in an emergency, can't train nurses in an emergency, can't do anything new. But I think America can deal with the old things just fine if she wants to.