The US is just returning to its traditional political economy, where the land is pillaged by elite interests, the rabble is dealt with as it can be, and any "fr

The US is just returning to its traditional political economy, where the land is pillaged by elite interests, the rabble is dealt with as it can be, and any "freedom" anyone has is totally coincidental and mainly stems from the failure of elites to even pay attention to them because they are making so much more money subjugating and impoverishing rabble elsewhere. The mid-20th century was a bizarre anomaly brought on by a number of non-repeatable factors, most notably WW2, the arms race, and Jim Crow, where we accidentally had broad-based economic growth that included a (almost totally white portion of the) working class. For centuries before that, the entire economic purpose of America was to be a literal extraction colony. The infrastructure needed to run the wealth pumps (for example, the pipelines needed to pump crude from the Permian to the Gulf, or the West Coast ports needed to import Chinese-made dollar store tchotchkes) will not decay, but things like public transit, water treatment, and midcentury highway tunnels will probably get worse, at least outside elite enclaves like New York and San Francisco.