Back in the day there were big infrastructure projects, the interstate highway system, nuclear fission reactors, USA was once a leader in rail, but now it seems USA can’t build any infrastructure at all, HDI is lowering, life expectancy is not as high as most other OECD countries. Anyone know what happened to cause this?
As an addendum to 1: after WWII the US was the only manufacturing power, and some of the money brought in by goods exports was spent on making life better for the chosen subset of the working class (white labour aristocracy) due to the relative power of organized labour and the concessions required of the capitalist class due to the mere existence of a powerful workers state demonstrating an alternative.