We have loads of critical infrastructure, namely bridges, dams, etc that are long past their serviceable lifespan and are accidents waiting to happen. It's a nationwide problem and we aren't doing anything about it.
Unfortunately all signs point to a scenario where people are going to die before it gets any better.
No signs point towards a scenario where things get better after people die. Our political system is a sick one. Expect no change.
Citation needed. A cursory look at Wikipedia for suicide rates suggests that they took a dip in the late 90s but otherwise are flat from the 80.
Violent crime has been trending down for decades.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suicide_in_the_United_States
https://www.statista.com/statistics/191219/reported-violent-...
Though I'll continue to argue that this is still kind of unacceptable, since a constant rate over an increased population means more people dying.
1: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/to-your-health/wp/2018/0...
You're right, we should have immediately banned all firearms nationally to prevent something like this from happening again, trampling all over the 2nd amendment. (nevermind how the hell you'd implement it without a thousand Ruby Ridges and Wacos, or why you expect to find more than a third of the guns in the first place [0]) It's not like he could have crashed a plane loaded with AMFO into the crowd instead, right? Or maybe we should just expand California's gun laws nationally, since that's worked out so well to stop the mass shootings there.
You say "OMG how haven't we fixed this, it must mean we don't care" while proposing no solutions, for a problem that might not have a solution. Britain still has terrorist attacks (vans, acid, knives) and that's after banning carrying a fucking butter knife. Humans will always find ways to kill each other, (checkout improvised prison weapons sometime) let's not go too crazy hunting down one of the smallest sources.
So, maybe our response to shootings shouldn't be compared to our response to crumbling infrastructure. At least with the infrastructure, there's a path forward that almost everyone would agree would work. That's not the case with guns.
0: http://reason.com/archives/2012/12/22/gun-restrictions-have-...
Yes.
Britain, and specifically London, seems to rival Paris and Brussels in terms of gang violence, but you still get a lot less dead people than in the US. You're suggesting there might not be a solution, yet practically no Western state except the US has this problem in the first place.
So that's 146 who died due to an effort to take their guns. Let's not repeat history.
On a similar note, there was the Waco siege. That was also an effort to seize guns. There the US government killed 76, which is also worse than the Las Vegas incident, but partly done by burning people to death instead of shooting them.
You'd have to have a very special configuration of what to include as mass shooting for Wounded Knee to count but none of Antietam, the Lawrence Massacre, the Opelousas Massacre, the Greenwood Massacre, the Fort Pillow Massacre, the Bear River Massacre, any number of major attacks in the California Genocide, etc., to be included.
But, by the usual standards, neither those nor Wounded Knee are included in the scope of that term.
Hell, people are dying every day in traffic accidents that could be mitigated with better design (or reduced by making better mass transit as an alternative, which as a byproduct is also much safer than driving).
It's a really terrible state of affairs.
The appeal to extremes and gerrymandering came afterwards. The obstructionist politics are not about willpower -- the issue is systemic.
*Climate change doesn't count because one side doesn't see it as a threat.
It's also obviously clear that at least one person in the US government doesn't like the current state of our infrastructure and would love to do something about it.
Say you have a senator who's constituents don't care one way or the other about your bill but their party affiliation requires them to vote against your bill. You toss them an earmark that they can use to say "look at how I've helped you" to his constituents next election with the understanding that he'll break from his party's default position on your bill.
Did you read the article?
There's something deeply wrong with large scale construction costs in America, but it isn't politics. Or it isn't _just_ politics. Politics and corruption can't explain 5-10x more expensive costs.
https://techcrunch.com/2017/07/09/why-so-costly/
https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/02/09/considerations-on-cost...
https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/02/17/highlights-from-the-co...
Corruption can explain any increase in cost, if your hands are in the money purse you can steal as much as you want.
Consider the following simple hypothetical - imagine that a project requires a single person to implement, and that person costs $100k in yearly salary (and assume for argument's sake that benefits that benefits, cost of materials, etc. are all free), and after a year of steady work, the project will be completed. Such a project would have a projected cost of $100k. Now let's assume that this person is distracted - they need to get their every decision approved, they have to pitch their work to stakeholders, etc., and as a result, the project now takes two years. Just by virtue of the project taking more time - all other factors constant - the project now costs double because the project now costs two years' salary instead of one.
When you have a political structure whereby Federal funding mixes with environmental review mixes with state funding mixes with private funding mixes with local permitting mixes with multiple state and local bodies each with their own permitting setups etc. - you have a guarantee that the process will be slower than molasses.
Then you have foreign countries with transit authorities having sole oversight and dedicated funding getting projects done in a fraction of the time.
You can argue that having three people paid $60,000 each to do the work of one foreigner making $10,000 a year in Asia is a 18x increase in costs. And you would be correct if labor costs were actually the majority of the overall cost. But they're not - administration is.
As bad as grift and corruption are, it did ensure that everyone had skin in the game and that money flowed in two directions. Mostly everyone had to make good on their promises. At the extremes there are bad examples of corruption where nothing got done, sure, but nothing getting done is the norm now with very little corruption.
Basic game theory predicts how these systems will play out. I really wonder why people are surprised with the results we get today.
The biggest cost overruns today are from delays.
https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2019/02/real-reason-stock-bu...
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/more-50-000-american-br... https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/economy/2018/08/13/infr... https://www.forbes.com/sites/niallmccarthy/2018/01/30/report... https://www.businessinsider.com/asce-gives-us-infrastructure... https://www.infrastructurereportcard.org/cat-item/bridges/