People and countries are different. They spend money on high speed rail and therefore don't spend money on something else. That something else can be a billion

People and countries are different. They spend money on high speed rail and therefore don't spend money on something else. That something else can be a billion different things. I don't miss high speed rail, but I do like owning a car much larger than a Japanese person with my income can afford. I can also fill it up and go anywhere I want to go whenever I want to go there, without regard for train schedules, train seating availability, train passengers that like to eat curry on the train, train passengers that talk a lot, etc... I'm not sure simply comparing countries on whether they have high speed trains or not really answers anything at all. I think the only thing I can kind of gather is that the Japanese like high speed trains and American are ambivalent to them.