> America's infrastructure is behind other developed countries because once upon a time it was AHEAD of it's time This is ludicrous. Look at this timeline[0]:

> America's infrastructure is behind other developed countries because once upon a time it was AHEAD of it's time This is ludicrous. Look at this timeline[0]: 2008 SEPA pan-European payment instruments become operational (parallel to domestic instruments) 2010 SEPA payments become dominant form of electronic payments 2011 SEPA payments replace national payments in the Eurozone 2014 SEPA becomes fully operational in all Eurozone countries. 2017 Instant SEPA payments of up to 15,000 euros within 10 seconds, starting 21 November And that's not counting national norms like RIB[1] that have allowed for trivial domestic next-day transfers since even before I opened my first bank account like 20 years ago. Same goes for chip and pin, which was basically ubiquitous even then. Now NFC payment terminals have basically been deployed everywhere over here across a couple of years, which means things like Apple Pay just works (and Android Pay if Google cared enough about non-US/UK/Canada/Australia markets). So the argument is "US was so advanced multiple decades ago that it rather stood still despite massive inconveniences to the end user". Breaking news: it wasn't ahead of its time at all even 20 years ago, and free market competition didn't do squat to make the situation change; policies enacted in the interest of the consumer do. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single_Euro_Payments_Area https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single_Euro_Payments_Area [1]: https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_Bank_Account_Number#Le_terme_RIB https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_Bank_Account_Number#Le_t...