America is not known for caring about public infrastructure if they can avoid it once upon a time most cities actually had a public work department that actually tried to keep you know the public places clean they don’t anymore if you want clean public places you have to go someplace else in the world. Japan, China, Taiwan, South Korea.
Most of that stuff has been farmed out to subcontractors in America and that includes what your kids eat in most public schools, the school cafeteria is just one big vending machine these days.
The West Coast of the United States, California, Washington, and Oregon. will just move on like the rest of the world is moving on away from the United States. Turning your back on infrastructure useful infrastructure medicine education, science, schools is not a winning hand long-term.
If you look at a map of the American South Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia will just move on. Actually it’s already happening and has been happening for the last 30 years. Other parts of the American South are however, stuck more firmly in the past and getting further behind and that also applies to some of the Midwestern states.
Louisiana has another ongoing long-term problem the gulf of Mexico is eating away at the bottom half of the state lands end is moving further north that involves scientific observations oh boy thems fighting words.
World War II significantly contributed to the development of the West Coast of the United States mid century. San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Seattle harbors became crucial to the war effort in the pacific, leading to industrial expansion and the establishment of the UC system and the junior colleges in California, which eventually led to Silicon Valley, also the large water projects built 50-60 years earlier and the the transcontinental railroads built 50 years prior also didn’t hurt the expansion and growth of the West Coast of the United States either.
Building useful infrastructure, in the can do America of the past worked, the parasitic AI data centers currently, however, appear to be a financial dead end.
That era of America appears to be gone at the Federal level, infrastructure, schools, science, medicine, college, vaccines, voting etc. etc. don’t appear to be on the current menu.
Poland had a relatively clear idea of what they wanted to do once the Russians were out unlike some of the other countries in the eastern block, and it didn’t hurt that some of their neighbors to the north Lithuania, Estonia, and Latvia also had pretty good idea of what they wanted to do once they were out from under the Russians, it’s just too bad that the Ukraine when they had the brief chance, they didn’t take advantage of it hopefully they’ll get a second chance.
Why is that a problem? Most of the people in China live in about 1/3 of the country. Imagine if everyone in the United States lived in just 1/3 of the United States even with 350 million people that would be crowded , but China has 1.3 billion people living in an area the size of the United States from the Atlantic Ocean to the Mississippi river imagine 1.3 billion people living just in that area.
Building infrastructure for a civilized society is never bad and when I say that nothing is perfect. There are downsides. I would rather have the infrastructure and I wished the United States still had that can-do attitude. The rail system across the country needs to be upgraded desperately.
The Chinese have even taken the lessons of Oak Ridge, Tennessee, they have built two Thorium reactors and refueled one without turning it off, and they appear to be right on schedule to have that larger second reactor online by 2030.
> Building infrastructure for a civilized society is never bad
If only. Everybody loves cutting the ribbon on shiny new infrastructure, but the cost of maintenance is very real and never ending.
As a simple example, rezone some agricultural land as residential and sell it to developers. Yay, free money! But only once, and now you have a bunch of roads and plumbing etc etc that you need to upkeep forever. If there's people living in the houses and paying taxes, that's fine, but if there aren't or they go away, you now have a very big, very expensive problem. Japan is deep into feeling the pain of this and demographically China is only a decade or two behind.
IDK if pretty much everyone can exclude Florida and Texas, the second and third most populated states. (Or I suppose you could be excluding the Northeast Corridor instead of Florida)
I'm no expert on USA but looking at a map Florida is very obviously on the east coast, and the entire peninsula is only slightly wider than GP's 100 miles.
Touche, I was thinking of it more as 100 miles in length, not 100 miles in width running all the way down the coast, but your interpretation seems more correct.
Another thing in short supply these days is actually being able to buy an actually good Apple pie or Peach pie. Oh well…
I shall try and see if I can get a Peach or an Apple pie. This weekend you know the old-fashioned pie that actually tastes good and is well made.
That’s another thing that’s in short supply along with actually getting any good baked goods unless you can go to a small Bakery somewhere if you can find one they usually cost a more but not that much more than what you could find in the supermarket times have been changing for the worst when comes to baked goods.
Del Monte in recent times was passed between four equity companies. One of those equity companies actually bought them twice. Del Monte was on the pathway to hell.
Hopefully some of those trees can be transplanted within a 50 mile radius of where they are. If I lived up in that area. I would seriously try to see if I could transplant a few.
Most of that stuff has been farmed out to subcontractors in America and that includes what your kids eat in most public schools, the school cafeteria is just one big vending machine these days.
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