This US is a big place, I don’t think it’s accurate to start an article with “traveling accross America” when you only drove around the DC area, one part of Maryland, NYC, and small part of South FL.
… and then compare to two cities in different European countries and think THEY are representative. There are many cities in Europe I can name that feel terribly dilapidated.
I think the article has the nugget of some good ideas and would love to hear them explored a little more rigorously and with more critical thinking.
It also seems to focus on those with student loans and degrees they'll never use, when we've never had much more than half of HS graduates enroll in a 4-year college the following year and over 60% of the population over 25 lack any college degree.
US didn’t have many large prosperous cities in the west or most of the south until very recently. Railroads and AC really changed where people lived in America.
I was going back to 1940 as recent history, back in say 1840 the largest southern city was New Orleans followed by Charleston, SC at 29k people and Louisville, KY at 21k.
To wonder where the wealth went you need to look at places that where at some point wealthy. Wealth however takes time to accumulate because waves of immigrants or kids from population booms don’t tend to have a lot of wealth.
