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
The US is re-learning now what the UK and Western Europe learned in the 1870s. The US learned it in the 1930s and 1940s (New Deal and Social Security), but unlearned it under years of GOP fiscal mismanagement since Reagan: while "small government" and low or no taxes sounds great, it doesn't build or maintain critical infrastructure, doesn't keep citizens safe and healthy, and doesn't ensure a functioning public education system that produces the workforce that devises and executes it all.
"Small government", "low taxes", and "thoughts and prayers" for thousands of gun violence victims each year are ideology, not sound policy. Countries running on ideology (i.e., on fumes) turn to authoritarianism (communism, fascism, Peronism, Mullahs) when their citizens don't see through that ruse.
The US can't fund its government becomes funding its government necessitates struggle sessions about how all of the money should go to minorities, feminists and the disabled. Your references to the New Deal left are woefully outdated. The United States is a set of tribal racial prison gangs all fighting over the public coffers.