Here's an unpopular theory: America is so pitted against eachother along a number of dimensions: class, race, ethnicity, gender, sex, political view, religion,

Here's an unpopular theory: America is so pitted against eachother along a number of dimensions: class, race, ethnicity, gender, sex, political view, religion, etc etc... that we've stopped thinking of ourselves as a cohesive society. And when you don't have a cohesive society, you don't care about improving things for everyone, only for your specific tribe. Why should tribe X care about the quality of life of tribe Y, when tribe Y likely doesn't care about them? The article mentions "wealthy Asian nations" as an example of what things could be like in terms of quality of infrastructure. Do you know what those nations have in common? Homogeneity. Japan is 98% ethnically Japanese. Thailand is 92% ethnically Thai. China is 94% Han. It's a lot harder to consider someone "not of your tribe" when you're less diverse.