Counter-examples are France and Japan. Democracies, electoral terms. High-speed rail that the world looks up to, investment in infrastructure everywhere. In France you have Grand Paris, a programme to transform the suburbs into denser housing and commercial space, a calculation and planning that INCLUDES public transport.

And the green initiatives in France. These, transit, Grand Paris, and much more are initiatives that take many years to realize.

Now let's move over to New Jersey and New York City. The most densely populated state (NJ) has some of the worst transit despite being in the NYC greater metropolitan area. An old tunnel between the two needs to be replaced, but politicians with four year mental horizons canned it until recently (ARC project). Infrastructure is a fight between Federal, two states and a city politically and partially from a funding perspective.

We could go on, but I just wanted to point out that the United States is a poor example of good governance. And that we don't need to live in a totalitarian nightmare just because we acknowledge the US fails to produce innovation and investment for the public good.

And let's not talk about debt, as if it is a unique problem to France or anything new.