We can't even fix our Roads and Bridges that previous generations built...

[Civic Justice]

Yet, China builds massive Bridges and High Speed Rails.... because even thought they have corruption, they don't let it stop them from building....

Here, we can't build anything because we don't have a system that functions with the mindset and integrity that existed when President Eisenhower Built Our Freeway system. We can't even maintain what was built by those who came before us.

We are crumbling across the nations, while the wealthy fleece everything and devastate the people... China builds FOR its People... America has allowed the wealthy to steal and hoard everything and displace its people to the point we have an 'expanding ghetto from Coast to Coast.... with a few enclaves for the well to do... But we have more broken down towns, and devastated cities... and sections of cities that we simply allowed the wealthy and the madness of racism bring us down to look in many places like a third world country. But we are too simplistic in madness, to rid racism... and get rid of the swindler and thieves in our government.

We can't build anything because America's history is too filled with policies and systems that cared more about racism, than about the prospering of the nation for the benefit of ALL AMERICAN PEOPLE

China makes us look like we don't know what the heck we are doing!!!! We can't even clothe and feed ourselves without Chinese Imports.
We can't furnish our homes or even build anything without "Chinese nuts and bolts and even to the degree, we import something as stupid as "cinder blocks" and "dry wall" and the fiber board now being used in construction.

( go through ones home and see if one an find anything not "imported" or the parts to make it having been imported".... Geed, Racism and Madness is why we are a crumbling nations with a near devastated infrastructure.

While Japan, China and Others have High Speed Rail Systems.. and we can't even build one between cities on the East or West Coast and the South is so backwards it may not get one for another 100 yrs.

Looks at the reality of what China has built... and they did it in 7 yrs.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4675520/World-s-longest-sea-bridge-finished-China.html

We are pathetic enough to have allowed a buffon to get in the office of the Presidency and then to give the wealthy $1.5 TRILLION in Tax Fleecing against and upon the America people, which will fleece the public for decades to come.

Such a stupid give away, while we sit on $20 Trillion of Debt.. just so the wealthy can sit on and hoard more money. It's Ludicrous...and Insane.

[dlk]

1. The High Cost of our Endless Foreign Wars Take Funds that Could be Used to for Our Infrastructure

The U. S. funds the military, including private contractors with no-bid contracts, while other countries fund education and infrastructure. It's all about priorities.

[brush]

2. Truthful and righteous rant.

[Civic Justice]

3. Its so crazy that most can't even comment on such topics, if they can't come up with a joke.

We had better engage things that can promote substance in dialog.... to address the reality... or we are the problem and we continue to contribute to the problem with our abstinence and silence, and passing everything off as if its too much to think about, or thinking a slap stick joke will suffice.

Generation before actually "TALKED ABOUT SUBSTANCE OF THINGS AND CONDITIONS" and they prospered and the politicians were without a choice except to deal with what the people talked about and made in substance of content for common interactive subject matter.

today, everything is a slap stick joke... so why would politicians take anything serious, because its not part of the general dialog within society among people. We have tech of the web, where people can talk.. and all that seems to be promote is one liner slap stick jokes and sarcasm. Then others are to busy to want to criticize any thread that actually talks about stuff. Rather than to contribute with meaningful dialog.. that other might embrace to promote social interactive commentary among people.

We need to Awaken... from the lackadaisical spins, and being lost in playing digital games and quips on social media.

[C_U_L8R]

4. Some builder Trump turned out to be

The only things he actually works on are his tedious tweets and his golf game. What a duffer.

[Ferrets are Cool]

5. But, the 1% keep getting richer and richer. nt

[Freelancer]

6. If they'd gotten us flying cars and jetpacks this would be no prob. (-: -nt

[cbreezen]

7. China needs new infrastructure. They are starting from scratch.

Their country is experincing a modern day industrial revolution.

They are not, however, doing this for their people.

China is no different than Russia.

The US is no different than China and Russia.

[Civic Justice]

8. The fact is... "they are building" and "WE ARE NOT"..

Trying to minimize facts that are OVERTLY visible... does not address what we need to address.
the fiction of the past is over... America IS NOT the powerhouse of Post World War II Era.
and no amount of denial of that fact will change what is happening today.

Saudi Arabia is becoming focused on the future, yet they have oil, but they are investing heavily in renewable energy.
https://www.globalcitizen.org/en/content/saudi-arabia-solar-energy-200-billion-investment/

The general overconfidence based on a long gone past, is why too many Americans' can't see the dynamics of our stagnation and decline. We have a Right Wing system fighting everything, thinking it can recreate the 1940's and 1950's with both fiction and fantasy and consumed in confabulations.

We have today a culture where a few people can hang out at Starbuck and drink $4+ cups of coffee or go to a happy hour and drop $40-60+ and they are blind to everything on the global level and where we fit. There is not a city in this nation that one cannot find and "ever expanding ghetto". We can't even fund our schools and install what is needed to protect our children, and roads and bridges that were built 60-80+ yrs ago... are in dire need of servicing. We have cities that file bankruptcy, and rural areas that once thrived are now, overgrown fields with rusty old equipment sitting around and we have a nation of houses builtin the early part of the 20th Century, sitting there waiting on a spark to go up in flames and burn to the ground within 20 minutes. Some towns across the country have "boarded up building", "empty store fronts that have now been empty for 20-30-and in some places for 40 yrs. We have "industrial blight" from companies that pulled up and left, and we were not smart enough to hold them accountable to clean up their mess.
We have people, who have seen their pension plans abandoned, and others who's pension has met the challenge of being insufficient. I know many people who have gone back to take security jobs after age 70, and faced with no means to even consider retiring, only sickness comes and makes them unable to work.

Yet... we have the wealthy boasting about having $Billions and we see companies being bought and sold and destroyed so another can claim they are a $ billion dollar enterprise. Yet, we are still paying people a wage that = No More Than It Cost to House and Feed A Slave. A mass of Americans can't buy a home and many with homes can't maintain them.

But, still we have people who want to be in denial and not realize how we've declined, while the world is modernizing around out.

A reasonable quality vehicle cost more than $30k.. and we have a nation with people still working 8 hr days and making less than $25k a year, even before taxes. We have the madness of an Education costing more than $240K for a reputable university education. After we allowed and even supported the Madness of Reagan to damage State Universities and have the cost skyrocket... and we have purely ignored the value of Community Colleges and did everything we can to discredit and undervalue what is vocational and technical training programs.

We have absolutely no respect for "small business", the nation has no concern to provide funding by any means for Small Business Development... except when the entrepreneurial comes from a professional family or a family with notoriety for having money. We forgot that "Small Business helped build this country"....

We have a generation now, who has no idea why the Stock Market was created. ( they don't know it was for average and industrial investors and employees to invest in the "STABILITY" - "RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT" AND MANAGED GROWTH. They have no idea that "Quarterly Reporting" was based on "Actual Production and Actual Sales"... they now see it as nothing but Speculators and Fleecer's railing about "how it must break the record from the previous quarter"... so we have stocks trading at 300- 3000 times the ability to actual produce and actually sell.... but we have degree riding madmen who see nothing but a fiction to borrow against fiction, over expand and over stock and pretend they are performing. Then 3 months later, the stock is sold off to Liquidators that feed the expanding "Dollar Store Group" and "Discounters'...so the company can "over stock for the next quarter and pretend they have booming sales.

They can do this because WE REMAIN UNAWARE, and afraid to think beyond 7.5 seconds about anything other than what entertainer got almost naked and call it fashion or what skinny girl can be seen with a bikini... or how many bathrooms does an entertainer have in an over exaggerated costly house. If we can't put on something with a commercial logo on it, people are claiming they are depressed, and if they can't shop like a shop-a-holic.. they claim life is such a drag. Until we have kids who are into bullying other kids because they don't have certain material things. The quality of character is now more based on "public popularity" rather than ethics and morals.

Yep.... Rome Fell... and many other Once Great Nations, and We Are Not Immune.

We have sit and allowed a 100% Moron to Occupy Our White House, just because he has money, that he swindled from not paying taxes, corruption, money washing and every type of mobster connection he could manage. He uses Belligerence AGAINST Everything this country invested Centures and Decades to Build.. and we allow him to desecrate it and push a mentality out in the world of Ignorance, that demonstrates that we have fallen to the level, to allow such madness, and then let our congressional people sanction it, because they are afraid their gravy train might get exposed. then wrap that into the madness of a segment of society, still lusting for the racist ignorance they remember from the past as they have taught their offspring to pursue in this day and age.

It's INSANITY......... and Confabulation Driving An Expanding Madness

[Civic Justice]

10. We have people now paying 500-1000 a month for ...

A Vehicle... just so they can say they have a certain status image, yet, they are still working a daily job... that might pay them $60 -$80 or $100K a year. Between the Vehicle, the House that cost more than they can actually afford, and then they must be decked in designer goods. We have a fictional society that has women paying 100's of dollars for a purse, they won't carry more than a month, if they carry it for a month. to the madness of some uncomfortable shoes, that over time, destroy their knees, and strain their calf'.... yet, they don't feel they are functioning if they don't have a closet full of overly costly poorly made shoes that are not designed for comfort and stability or address the health matter of the damages it does to their back and other parts of their bodies.

We may need to step back and look at practicality... especially when we have some people making $200K per household and claiming they can't make ends meet.
We have "dumb" entertainer and sports figures making 10's and 100's of millions over a matter of a few years, and within less than a decade they are filing bankruptcy.

We just may need to step back and look at practicality !!! When we have the gaming with housing making simple homes unaffordable by fiction and fantasy.... of over valuing what it is.

Yet... in America we have Children who are malnourished and some near starvation... and we won't even let a kid eat a school lunch if they don't have the money to do so.

[cbreezen]

16. A lot of thought was expressed in your posts...

These are things upon which I ponder.

I don't visit Starbucks, but I love a good cup of coffee.

I don't own a car, but I surely miss having one.

My chauffeur is a bus driver.

A decent pair of shoes is more important than tires.

Pizza made from pita bread and cheese is better cause Mom makes it.

[sharedvalues]

9. Even worse. $3 Trillion. And we put it on a credit card.

Future generations will have to pay for that tax cut.
(The 1.5T estimate is from the GOP and depends on making extremely optimistic and likely incorrect assumptions of how the economy will change. The true number for the tax cut is $3 trillion.$


It’s all part of the GOP strategy to destroy the government to cut taxes on GOP billionaires.

[Civic Justice]

11. The Pursuit of Plutocracy.... is damaging America's Democracy

[Lee-Lee]

12. The biggest reason we dont have high speed rail is most people dont want it

There are very few routes where it makes sense.

Of those that are there, it would be hard pressed to make a high speed rail system that is competitive with air travel. As cheap as air travel is between the places where high speed rail may be viable, like an NYC to Chicago line, you would have to get the high speed rail prices down even lower than that for most people to choose the slower option.

Hell, even low speed rail, as much cheaper is it is to build and operate, isn’t competitive with air travel.
I have often checked the cost of rail travel versus air when doing business travel, and rail has 100% of the time come out more expensive for a trip that took longer and had much more inconvenient travel times (like a 1:00am departure time).

Another reason is that all out infrastructure is set up around the automobile. When you travel it is rare that you can travel long distance and not need an automobile on the other end. In most of the other countries that have high speed rail they also have well developed side rail lines and bus lines, so you can almost always get where you need to go without ever needed a car or just needing a taxi the very last bit. In the US unless your travel is ending in a large city with robust public transit that’s hard. If I need to go to a small town in France I can take high speed rail to low speed to bus line and maybe a taxi. France is roughly the size of Texas. If there was a high speed rail line to Dallas from there you would be on your own with maybe crappy bus options from there to maybe close to your location. You can probably get flights closer in almost all cases than you can get rail now.

[crazycatlady]

13. I'm spoiled by where I'm from

And as a young adult venturing out, I took this for granted.

I grew up in the NYC suburbs. The city was always a train ride away (at least) every hour. Trains do work for cities where a lot of people work (or have a lot of events) where it makes sense to run them every hour.

Never taken high speed rail. For between cities (I go to DC from time to time), it is much cheaper to drive than take Amtrak.

[Lee-Lee]

14. Just to try I looked for an upcoming trip.

Leaving from Asheville NC going to DC.

Round trip airfare- $272 leaving from Asheville, 3 hour travel time each way. Leaves late in the day and flight leaves at a good time for me.

Round trip train- $202. 10.5 hour travel time each way. Train leaves from Greenville SC so I have to also drive there and back, another hour each way added. And the only option leaves at 11:00pm and gets there at 9:30, well my training event starts at 9:00 so I would have to leave a full day earlier as well and spend a whole day just waiting.

[crazycatlady]

15. I live in NJ now

For a Trenton (1 hour drive) DC trip it runs at least $80 each way (regular coach, not Acela). If I depart from NYC or Newark (no driving, NJ transit takes me there) it is going north to go south.

Easier to hop in the car. People would take transit more if it was more cost effective than driving. Now getting in/out of NYC is a different story. I'd rather watch a Trump sex tape than drive in NYC (I just vomited in my mouth while saying this).