The suburbs are always a shock, after living in New York City. All the things you look at as luxuries—space, a backyard, a car and parking, and more—are completely normal. I think if you want to understand the scale of American wealth, it's misleading to go to the Upper East Side or the Hamptons or Palm Springs; almost all nations have some kind of elite that live at a scale of wealth that's beyond imagination; but, what America has, which I think is so startling, if you forget how normal it is here, are vast tracts of farmland converted into five-bedroom houses—millions of four-to-five-bedroom houses (for usually less than four-to-five people).
Viral videos of new high schools built in suburban school districts somewhat capture this scale of wealth. Test scores are in decline, and most people, young people today, can look forward to downward and upward mobility, but there's still enough collective wealth in suburban school districts to afford waste—and to hide the downward trajectory of the American economy at large…