The US has forgotten how to do infrastructure

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rail_transport_in_Japan#Major_...

Admittedly anecdotal, but after having lived near two major DOE national laboratories (where >40% of my neighbors worked at the lab), I wouldn't be surprised if 60-80% of the workers at these labs could be eliminated under a combination of audit-based reform, regulatory reform, and management changes. Without any change in output or results. I've listened to descriptions of what people do at these labs, and it blows me away how low productivity they are compared to the private sector. I've known people who work entire workweeks that could be consolidated into 3-5 hours of work, and they're willing to admit it. In fact, those that would try to change from within have told me they would feel vulnerable to retaliation if they went through with it.

And that's before we get into the shitshow that is federal contract work. We've turned federal contract work into a goldmine for whoever has enough lawyers to win a bid. And we don't even know how many people are employed doing that contract work [0]!

At this point, meaningful reform means taking 10's of millions of people and forcing productivity on them to the point where most of them are unnecessary. We could probably double the unemployment rate with the right reforms. That's why it won't happen.

[0] http://www.govexec.com/contracting/2015/03/even-cbo-stumped-...

The towns there are small, but full of people hungry for opportunities and good work.

Yet everywhere you go there is no work to be done. Businesses—even big box stores like Walmart or Target—are closed down. Homes lay vacant despite their reasonably cheap (at least for someone living in Silicon Valley) $20,000 price tag. Even churches in the area have to close their doors but leave their steeples standing, unable to draw in an audience or—and most importantly—any money to maintain things.

This isn't Detroit I'm talking about, it's a fairly typical suburb of a larger metropolitan area in the midwest.

The answer for many of these people has largely and loudly been: "Bring back jobs from overseas! Stop outsourcing work to China!"

But of course that's not a valid answer, since the problem is that the jobs these towns once knew now belong to machines which can work tens of times harder and longer at a fraction of the cost of their former human counterparts. Yes, some of the work has gone overseas, but much of it has just become "modernized" by technology.

And here's the thing: the infrastructure for things as simple as Internet access in these parts of the US just isn't there.

So nobody goes to school to learn programming or design or how to be a modern entrepreneur because they (the individuals and schools) just don't have any connection to those parts of the landscape. And when they do, their model is wildly out of date.

One of the Universities I visited and, later, a high school had each just opened a computer lab for students in which the goal wasn't to help students learn programming, or design, or anything like that, but merely how to type.

This of course added on top of the decrepit roads, buildings, etc. The state is wildly out of money because it can't put people to work, and the people can't work because the infrastructure just isn't there. It's depressing to see, really. I want to know how we can improve this, and what someone living on the other side of the country might do to help.