It is now five years later and the disparity between the US and China in this respect has only gotten worse. But hey, that’s a good thing right?
It is now five years later and the disparity between the US and China in this respect has only gotten worse. But hey, that’s a good thing right?
When Japan had HSR, they would argue America can’t have it because America is large.
With China having HSR, that argument no longer works.
They’re pivoting to the standard argument about how America is “too diverse” for infrastructure projects now, but eventually will probably just land on HSR being a racial trait of the inscrutable asiatic or some shit.
Never mind the fact that when America wanted to build highways it paved over black neighborhoods without a second’s remorse - meanwhile in China there is a long running tradition of so-called “nail houses”, where a single homeowner refused to sell to the government so they had to build around it because they respect people’s right to live where they want too much to invoke eminent domain.
They used the same argument about medicare for all.
I still don’t really understand how that logic was self evident? Why does the size of the country affect whether social programs can work? If anything it will be more efficient due to economies of scale.
Is it the ““homogenous”” part? That always sounded like a dogwhistle for saying it works in Nordic countries because they don’t have those “minorities” dragging everyone down. Or maybe it’s because wealth inequality is too extreme in the US? I still don’t see how that logic holds, I mean just fucking take the wealth from the people who have it, if inequality is what prevents a functioning society.
That’s exactly it.
And it works, since our health care and ““socialism”” is getting dismantled while immigration is increasing. So when they say it’s the fault of the immigrants, that we aren’t homogeneous enough, they can point and it will seem true.