The thing that really surprised me about strip malls in California, specifically Los Angeles, is that they have some really fantastic restaurants.
The federal government now spends one of every four dollars in the entire economy. It borrows one of every three dollars it spends. No nation, no entity, large or small, public or private, can thrive, or survive intact, with debts as huge as ours.
I have always thought of sophistication as rather a feeble substitute for decadence.