HOLLUPAMINNIT 22% of people graduated from high school in 1940. High School was a new idea in 1940 related to industrialization and the need for the American economy to pivot from agrarian to manufacturing. Meanwhile the illiteracy rate among minorities in 1940 was over ten percent so... that's gotten rather better? And while there have been some troubling trends related to COVID there's been a lot more right-wing hay made about it than anything else. That's because we stopped making it worthwhile. This isn't a "work ethic" problem this is a "rational actor" problem. Not everyone refuses to pay for infrastructure. We got problems, agreed. But howling at the moon about how everything has been bad forever doesn't point towards solutions.Where in 1940, kids graduating from high school were generally capable of reading and writing at least at a twelfth grade level.
We destroyed the work ethic to the point that an entire generation is unwilling to get a job despite having spent decades going to school to train for those jobs.
For that matter, Osama didn’t refuse to pay to keep up our infrastructure.