Let us gaze in awe upon a more advanced civilization

Yglesias:

Steve Clemons reports that economic stimulus is under way in second-tier Chinese cities hit hard by the economic downturn:

And on top of that, the central government has greenlighted three large scale transportation related projects that it had previously rejected — including the building of Wuxi’s first subway system and a new passenger hub terminal for an express train stop on a line being built both from Shanghai to Nanjing as well as Shanghai to Beijing.

The focus here on keeping people working, on correcting obvious environmental problems, on getting large scale public works infrastructure immediately underway is incredibly impressive — and makes me even more frustrated with the absence of this kind of focus in the U.S.

There has been something of a lack of vision about this kind of thing in the US. But honestly what I’m even more frustrated by is that we didn’t take advantage of the boom years to think seriously about our growth patterns.

So, my question is, why hasn't the United States built light rail transport for our cities?

Possible explanations:

1) The Racism Explanation: America's politicians have been blocked from building trains by conservative white people who don't want Those Scary Negroes to be able to reach their residential neighborhoods.

2) The Ideology Explanation: Conservatives religiously bought into the idea that any and all government spending, including infrastructure spending, was Evil. Also, conservatives believed that environmentalism was just a cover for socialism, and so automatically opposed any project that environmentalists supported.

3) The Democracy Explanation: Democracy is just bad at building infrastructure, because it's impossible to get the necessary consensus. Fascist countries like China can get things done by ordering people around.

4) The Special Interest Explanation: American oil companies opposed trains because they wanted to maximize demand for oil by making driving absolutely necessary. American car companies wanted to protect their businesses. Both lobbied the government not to build any trains.

5) The Other Explanation: Chinese people are inherently more intelligent than the Caucasian people who run the United States, and so they saw the importance of infrastructure while we did not.

OK, so, which one (or combination) of these is the right explanation? Cast your vote!