I’m back in the states for holidays but this time it was such a shock to realize everything looks so old, like from the airport to the convenience stores, malls, gas stations, etc. Why does everything look like it hasn’t changed from the 90s? And I was out just for a couple of months but things look newer and shinier in Panama and El Salvador compared to here. I cannot even imagine what some of you coming back from east Asia must feel. Did our country peak in the 90s and other countries are going through their renaissance? I love the convenience of the US where everything is open 24 hrs and you can get things delivered to your door basically overnight if you pay the price but I feel like we’re stuck with very old and boring infrastructure, makes me feel almost the same way I felt when I went to eastern Europe
You are comparing the city center facade of shiny cities that barely even had electricity 30 years ago, to shitty parts of the US like Detroit.
If you were to actually live and integrate in the countries where you think everything is great and shiny, you would understand that that only applies to the tourist-friendly city center that you have explored and that outside of it, things are bad and third world.
It is like a Japanese tourist from the countryside going to Manhattan and never going out of it or seeing society’s problems, saying that buildings are so much taller in the US compared to Japan.