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America Is Terrible, as Long as You Overlook Every Last Bit of Good News
A Twitter question:
Or that the life expectancy for Russian males is 64 years old, and for Russian females it’s 75 years old. For American men, life expectancy is 73.5 years, and for women it’s 79.3 years. (This number has dropped a bit in recent years, an issue for genuine concern, likely reflecting a combination of Covid-19, pandemic-related deaths such as delayed medical treatment, an increasing rate of drug overdoses, etc.)
But let’s turn the camera back upon ourselves. No one would dispute that America has problems — big, serious, severe problems, worsening in some areas. But when I hear someone declaring, “Our whole country is ugly and decayed,” I would urge them to get out more.
“It should be easy for us to make things like the Moscow subway.” First, remember it was the British who designed the Moscow subway, and then Stalin had the architects arrested, detained, and deported:
“If we’re so rich and brilliant it should be easy as pie for us to make things like the Moscow subway. . . .”
For this, I can turn to a bunch of centrist and left-of-center publications and think tanks, who, sotto voce, recognize that red tape, environmental-impact statements and regulations of every kind, lawsuits, increased costs for union labor and materials, and a lack of consequences for going over budget or falling behind schedule have left most mass-transit projects a bloated, slow-moving mess.
Let’s begin with getting all the permits in line. From the Niskanen Center:
The Medici Project illuminates the problems that come once the construction finally begins:
“If we’re so rich and brilliant it should be easy as pie for us to make things like . . . the Burj Khalifa . . . .”
Compared to elaborate subways, building skyscrapers is easy. The United States has 890 buildings of more than 150 meters or 40 floors. New ones open their doors to residents and workers every year. The second-highest skyscraper in New York City, the 98-story Central Park Tower, just opened its doors a few years ago. The new 70-story J. P. Morgan Chase building is scheduled to open next year. There are 20 major skyscraper projects under construction in Austin, with another 30 proposed or in the planning stages.
And as you may have heard, there’s an audacious proposal to build the second-highest building in the country in Oklahoma City.
Architecturally, you might love the designs of these new skyscrapers, or you might hate them. Maybe the Brooklyn Tower gives you Eye of Sauron vibes. (I’m not going to lie, the under-construction Waldorf Astoria in Miami looks to me like a pile of glittering Christmas presents that could topple over.) But we still build amazing things in this country, and you just have to be willing to see them, even if they contradict your preconceived narrative that “our whole country is ugly and decayed.”
If you don’t like skyscrapers, there’s the new Gilder Center at the Natural History museum in New York, the cool-looking One River North in Denver, the soon-to-open Populus hotel in that city, or the planned “motorcycle amphitheater” outside the Harley-Davidson headquarters in Milwaukee. Or The Sphere in Las Vegas. The Alamo in San Antonio is working on a sweeping overhaul and restoration. Been to Gettysburg lately? They’ve got an amazing new “Beyond the Battle Museum.” In my neck of the woods, the southwest waterfront in Washington, D.C., and across and down the Potomac, the recently expanded waterfront in Alexandria, are dramatic improvements upon what was there before.
It’s so easy to moan and groan, “Ugh, everything sucks. We’re a country in decline. Americans are fat and lazy. Look at this idiot I saw on social media.” Why do some Americans think everything in our country sucks? Because the overwhelming majority of the media they consume, from their social-media feeds to their prime-time cable-news shout-fests, is designed to make them angry and frustrated — and those hosts are likely telling them that the only way to save the country is to tune in every night, hit the subscribe button, buy their books, and vote for their preferred candidates.
You probably didn’t hear about two newbreakthroughs in slowing down Alzheimer’s from Eli Lilly and Eisai. Or the new gene therapies to treat sickle-cell disease. Next up: gene therapy to minimize or eliminate the risk of high cholesterol and to prevent heart disease. If you heard about the development of an mRNA vaccine for pancreatic cancer, you probably heard about it from someone telling you mRNA vaccines are bad and scary and all a sinister plot by pharmaceutical companies.
You name it, Americans are figuring out how to do it faster. Faster ways to count microbes and develop antibiotics? It’s happening at University of Colorado Boulder. Faster 3D printing? Happening at Harvard. Faster ways to conduct biopsies of brain-cancer tumors? Happening at New York University Langone.
Chat GPT? Made in America. Quantum computing? As far as we know, we’re leading the pack. Light-based computer chips that don’t use electricity and are effectively un-hackable? University of Pennsylvania researchers developed them last week. You probably didn’t hear about that, but you did hear about the sketchy story of the advice columnist who claims she was conned into handing $50,000 in cash to a stranger. (Charlie has questions about her story.)
This country still does great things, you just don’t hear about it much because it doesn’t draw as many eyeballs as “you won’t believe what this idiot just did.”
Finally, there’s never a good time to draw the spectacularly erroneous conclusion, “Oh, Vladimir Putin and Russia have got things figured out, and we don’t.” But it’s particularly egregious to draw that conclusion the week Alexei Navalny died in prison because of Putin’s despotic rule.
No, America Is Not ‘Ugly and Decayed’
On the menu today: A stray question on America’s alleged decline into decay spurs a useful examination of why U.S. infrastructure projects are slow, expensive, and often delayed; what America is building, what we’re innovating, what we’re doing faster than anyone else on Earth, and why our cultural, political, and social-media environment so often wants us to believe the worst about each other; and today is the day to pay tribute to America’s less-remembered presidents.America Is Terrible, as Long as You Overlook Every Last Bit of Good News
A Twitter question:
You’ve no doubt heard the data and anecdotes comparing the average salary in Russia ($787 per month) to the average salary in the U.S. ($4,713 per month). Or you may have heard that 22 percent of Russians do not have indoor plumbing, while thankfully just three-tenths of 1 percent of American households lack indoor plumbing. Or that Russia ranks 141st out of 180 countries in perceptions of public-sector corruption last year, while we rank 24th. (Ukraine ranked 104th, for those wondering.)
Or that the life expectancy for Russian males is 64 years old, and for Russian females it’s 75 years old. For American men, life expectancy is 73.5 years, and for women it’s 79.3 years. (This number has dropped a bit in recent years, an issue for genuine concern, likely reflecting a combination of Covid-19, pandemic-related deaths such as delayed medical treatment, an increasing rate of drug overdoses, etc.)
But let’s turn the camera back upon ourselves. No one would dispute that America has problems — big, serious, severe problems, worsening in some areas. But when I hear someone declaring, “Our whole country is ugly and decayed,” I would urge them to get out more.
“It should be easy for us to make things like the Moscow subway.” First, remember it was the British who designed the Moscow subway, and then Stalin had the architects arrested, detained, and deported:
And our Andrew Stuttaford reminds us that if the Moscow subway system enjoys little crime, it is probably partially because of the installation of an extensive facial-recognition system, which has also been used to identify and arrest dozens of journalists and activists.
“If we’re so rich and brilliant it should be easy as pie for us to make things like the Moscow subway. . . .”
For this, I can turn to a bunch of centrist and left-of-center publications and think tanks, who, sotto voce, recognize that red tape, environmental-impact statements and regulations of every kind, lawsuits, increased costs for union labor and materials, and a lack of consequences for going over budget or falling behind schedule have left most mass-transit projects a bloated, slow-moving mess.
Let’s begin with getting all the permits in line. From the Niskanen Center:
Read that again: “The average EIS now takes 4.5 years to complete.” Why do mass-transit and other transportation projects cost so much? Because you get it designed, you get access to the land (perhaps through eminent domain), and then you spend a half-decade fighting in court to make sure that building the new subway station won’t endanger a snail darter. Keep in mind, most large-scale infrastructure projects in blue states and cities now face opposition from environmental groups that oppose any project that involves fossil fuels. (Apparently, they prefer solar-powered underground subway cars.)
The Medici Project illuminates the problems that come once the construction finally begins:
We are indeed rich and brilliant, compared to any other country on Earth. But we haven’t figured out how to quickly create consensus around complicated projects, often underground, that would take years to complete in high-density cities even in the best of circumstances. It should not surprise you that Moscow under Stalin had an easier time getting things built than any modern American city; opposing the regime could get you lined up and executed. This doesn’t mean that modern America’s endless red tape, delays, lawsuits, and general paralyzing inertia aren’t real problems. It just means that, “Ah, Stalinist Russia must have figured out something we haven’t” is not the lesson we should take away from this.
“If we’re so rich and brilliant it should be easy as pie for us to make things like . . . the Burj Khalifa . . . .”
Compared to elaborate subways, building skyscrapers is easy. The United States has 890 buildings of more than 150 meters or 40 floors. New ones open their doors to residents and workers every year. The second-highest skyscraper in New York City, the 98-story Central Park Tower, just opened its doors a few years ago. The new 70-story J. P. Morgan Chase building is scheduled to open next year. There are 20 major skyscraper projects under construction in Austin, with another 30 proposed or in the planning stages.
And as you may have heard, there’s an audacious proposal to build the second-highest building in the country in Oklahoma City.
Architecturally, you might love the designs of these new skyscrapers, or you might hate them. Maybe the Brooklyn Tower gives you Eye of Sauron vibes. (I’m not going to lie, the under-construction Waldorf Astoria in Miami looks to me like a pile of glittering Christmas presents that could topple over.) But we still build amazing things in this country, and you just have to be willing to see them, even if they contradict your preconceived narrative that “our whole country is ugly and decayed.”
If you don’t like skyscrapers, there’s the new Gilder Center at the Natural History museum in New York, the cool-looking One River North in Denver, the soon-to-open Populus hotel in that city, or the planned “motorcycle amphitheater” outside the Harley-Davidson headquarters in Milwaukee. Or The Sphere in Las Vegas. The Alamo in San Antonio is working on a sweeping overhaul and restoration. Been to Gettysburg lately? They’ve got an amazing new “Beyond the Battle Museum.” In my neck of the woods, the southwest waterfront in Washington, D.C., and across and down the Potomac, the recently expanded waterfront in Alexandria, are dramatic improvements upon what was there before.
It’s so easy to moan and groan, “Ugh, everything sucks. We’re a country in decline. Americans are fat and lazy. Look at this idiot I saw on social media.” Why do some Americans think everything in our country sucks? Because the overwhelming majority of the media they consume, from their social-media feeds to their prime-time cable-news shout-fests, is designed to make them angry and frustrated — and those hosts are likely telling them that the only way to save the country is to tune in every night, hit the subscribe button, buy their books, and vote for their preferred candidates.
You probably didn’t hear about two newbreakthroughs in slowing down Alzheimer’s from Eli Lilly and Eisai. Or the new gene therapies to treat sickle-cell disease. Next up: gene therapy to minimize or eliminate the risk of high cholesterol and to prevent heart disease. If you heard about the development of an mRNA vaccine for pancreatic cancer, you probably heard about it from someone telling you mRNA vaccines are bad and scary and all a sinister plot by pharmaceutical companies.
You name it, Americans are figuring out how to do it faster. Faster ways to count microbes and develop antibiotics? It’s happening at University of Colorado Boulder. Faster 3D printing? Happening at Harvard. Faster ways to conduct biopsies of brain-cancer tumors? Happening at New York University Langone.
Chat GPT? Made in America. Quantum computing? As far as we know, we’re leading the pack. Light-based computer chips that don’t use electricity and are effectively un-hackable? University of Pennsylvania researchers developed them last week. You probably didn’t hear about that, but you did hear about the sketchy story of the advice columnist who claims she was conned into handing $50,000 in cash to a stranger. (Charlie has questions about her story.)
This country still does great things, you just don’t hear about it much because it doesn’t draw as many eyeballs as “you won’t believe what this idiot just did.”
Finally, there’s never a good time to draw the spectacularly erroneous conclusion, “Oh, Vladimir Putin and Russia have got things figured out, and we don’t.” But it’s particularly egregious to draw that conclusion the week Alexei Navalny died in prison because of Putin’s despotic rule.
