1/People sometimes ask me how I form my ideas about the world! Well, folks, there are basically two ingredients: Song lyrics, and data.

Just read a bunch of papers and articles and stuff, and try to relate it to song lyrics.

2/Let's go through an example: How the song "Kyoto", by Phoebe Bridgers, illustrates some of the problems with the American development model (infrastructure, education, and health).

3/We start the song in Japan, where the narrator (presumably, Phoebe herself) is utterly uninterested in the country or its culture, but finds bullet trains, pay phones (!!), and chain convenience stores pretty convenient.

4/The object of the song -- presumably, a guy Phoebe is romantically involved with -- is suffering from substance abuse, which is causing the narrator no end of frustration.

5/Already we can see an anecdote reflecting the work of economists Anne Case and Angus Deaton, who (among others) have noted rising opiate abuse and "deaths of despair" in the U.S., especially (though not exclusively) among blue-collar white people: https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691190785/deaths-of-despair-and-the-future-of-capitalism