Remember how good we have it
by Bryan
From James Fallows’ How America Can Rise Again, in the January/February issue of The Atlantic:
Here is the sort of thing you notice anew after being in India or China, the two rising powers of the day: there is still so much nature, and so much space, available for each person on American soil. Room on the streets and sidewalks, big lawns around the houses, trees to walk under, wildflowers at the edge of town—yes, despite the sprawl and overbuilding. A few days after moving from our apartment in Beijing, I awoke to find a mother deer and two fawns in the front yard of our house in Washington, barely three miles from the White House. I know that deer are a modern pest, but the contrast with blighted urban China, in which even pigeons are scarce, was difficult to ignore.
And the people! The typical American I see in an office building or shopping mall, stout or slim, gives off countless unconscious signs—hair, skin, teeth, height—of having grown up in a society of taken-for-granted sanitation, vaccination, ample protein, and overall public health. I have learned not to bore people with my expressions of amazement at the array of food in ordinary grocery stores, the size and newness of cars on the street, the splendor of the physical plant for universities, museums, sports stadiums. And honestly, by now I’ve almost stopped noticing. But if this is “decline,” it is from a level that most of the world still envies.
He goes on to paint a rather bleak picture of the political future while stressing the points above (“America the society is in fine shape! America the polity is most certainly not.”), but it’s worth remembering that the world would yearn for what we have.
Bryan Joiner 
i think you get it wrong coachie. india has 300 million people in their middle class, as well as all if not better infrastructure amenities given their recent spend on roads, etc.
yet people there still aspire to be here, because as hokey as it sounds, the american spirit is still something that they haven’t been able to replicate. (that and a good steak)
it’s kinda apples to oranges. countries like China are where the US was a 60 years ago, many people living in poverty, a dominant manufacturing economy that treats its workers poorly, flush with money and spirit building thousands of miles of train tracks, subways, highways, various other public works and skyscrapers.