It’s an artifact from the Cold War. The Soviets put money into the military and so did America but the Soviets added bodies and machines with their spending. America’s military used the money to fund far out ideas.
But that also gave America the impression that far out thinking was the norm. The extra lengths Americans went to embrace their dreams meant things cost more but it was okay because they lived in an era of abundance. But that time has passed and the cost of that older lifestyle is no longer sustainable. We’re witnessing the shrinking of Anglosphere prosperity as it mirrors America. When each country hits bottom they will be forced to adopt more cost effective urban planning with transit to suit folks who don’t own cars. It’s just a matter of time.
It’s worse than us simply becoming poorer. It’s that these places - sprawling low density suburbs - where never financially sustainable to begin with. They never brought in enough tax revenue to remotely cover the expense of maintaining all their infrastructure. There’s just too few people per square mile to pay for it all at the property tax rates people can afford. We’ve only kept things going this long through a few mechanisms:
Letting older suburban infrastructure decay to well past its replacement state.
Relying on growth to prop things up. (Build new neighborhoods and require developers to repave streets and replace/upgrade utility infrastructure in an area.)
Relying on ever higher levels of debt.
It isn’t financially sustainable. It was never financially sustainable. As long as a town can keep growing, they can keep the Ponzi scheme going for a time. But eventually you hit a wall on that and the whole house of cards collapses.
That and a frontier-era individualism, now pressed into the service of standing against socialism. If you live in a single-family home and only get around in your private car, other people don’t look like comrades or fellow citizens so much as traffic and competition. As cars cost money, they’re also a good emblem of material success.
And, of course, those uncomfortable with seeing those people as their fellow citizens no longer need to share subway carriages or tenement corridors with them.
I would say it predates the Cold War. The industrial revolution started in England, and then the US ran with it. The UK built the first ship with a steam engine, the US built the first ship to sail across the Atlantic under steam power, and that’s basically been the pattern for the last 200 years. Humphrey Davy describes electromagnetism, Edison and Tesla build industrial scale power grids. England gave us Alan Turing, and in America you get IBM, Intel, Texas Instruments, Nvidia, AMD, Microsoft, Apple and Google.
While “the anglosphere” as this thread terms it has been inventing everything from antibiotics to thermonuclear weapons to the T-shirt, what have the rest of you been up to?
If it weren’t for “The anglosphere” the rest of you would still be dying of smallpox by candle light.
It’s an artifact from the Cold War. The Soviets put money into the military and so did America but the Soviets added bodies and machines with their spending. America’s military used the money to fund far out ideas.
But that also gave America the impression that far out thinking was the norm. The extra lengths Americans went to embrace their dreams meant things cost more but it was okay because they lived in an era of abundance. But that time has passed and the cost of that older lifestyle is no longer sustainable. We’re witnessing the shrinking of Anglosphere prosperity as it mirrors America. When each country hits bottom they will be forced to adopt more cost effective urban planning with transit to suit folks who don’t own cars. It’s just a matter of time.
It’s worse than us simply becoming poorer. It’s that these places - sprawling low density suburbs - where never financially sustainable to begin with. They never brought in enough tax revenue to remotely cover the expense of maintaining all their infrastructure. There’s just too few people per square mile to pay for it all at the property tax rates people can afford. We’ve only kept things going this long through a few mechanisms:
Letting older suburban infrastructure decay to well past its replacement state.
Relying on growth to prop things up. (Build new neighborhoods and require developers to repave streets and replace/upgrade utility infrastructure in an area.)
Relying on ever higher levels of debt.
It isn’t financially sustainable. It was never financially sustainable. As long as a town can keep growing, they can keep the Ponzi scheme going for a time. But eventually you hit a wall on that and the whole house of cards collapses.
That and a frontier-era individualism, now pressed into the service of standing against socialism. If you live in a single-family home and only get around in your private car, other people don’t look like comrades or fellow citizens so much as traffic and competition. As cars cost money, they’re also a good emblem of material success.
And, of course, those uncomfortable with seeing those people as their fellow citizens no longer need to share subway carriages or tenement corridors with them.
I would say it predates the Cold War. The industrial revolution started in England, and then the US ran with it. The UK built the first ship with a steam engine, the US built the first ship to sail across the Atlantic under steam power, and that’s basically been the pattern for the last 200 years. Humphrey Davy describes electromagnetism, Edison and Tesla build industrial scale power grids. England gave us Alan Turing, and in America you get IBM, Intel, Texas Instruments, Nvidia, AMD, Microsoft, Apple and Google.
While “the anglosphere” as this thread terms it has been inventing everything from antibiotics to thermonuclear weapons to the T-shirt, what have the rest of you been up to?
If it weren’t for “The anglosphere” the rest of you would still be dying of smallpox by candle light.