We could, like, stop framing it as us vs them to start. We could also elect leaders who want progress and are willing to squeeze the 1% even a little bit to make that progress.

China is taking long term views. Transit and rail, solar energy, batteries, manufacturing and automation, science investment.

The US is thinking very short term, to benefit very few. Ignoring rail, cutting renewables, building highly speculative and unpopular data centers, and cutting funding to science and the arts.

I see the 30 year vision for infrastructure in China and I think we could do it here. We just... don't. Because we have somehow made long term investments that benefit many a political dead end so our two "teams" can argue about how the other team is evil.

China is an authoritarian regime that brutally punishes dissidents. Just throwing this out there because apparently everyone seems to have forgotten this.

It's easy to build railroads when you have no safety rules or oversight and can force the Uyghurs to build the parts in slave camps.

You're going to get a lot of angry responses about how China can only accomplish what it does because it's an authoritarian regime and very bad, but you're actually correct. Historically, authoritarian countries are held back by their regimes, which means China is likely underperforming what it could accomplish if Xi Jinping Conservative Boomer Thought with Chinese Characteristics wasn't strangling everything.

The United States very much started trying to invest seriously for the future in the Biden years, and as it turns out, people associated that with consumer inflation and chucked it out in 2024 for another round of the Republican "wrecking crew" dismantling and demolishing the federal agencies that the USA has historically used to Get Stuff Done in the long term.

At this point it's hard to point to a major country or bloc that isn't shooting itself in the foot.