Nah, I feel like you're really reaching. Walking is an innate characteristic of all humans. One of the defining characteristics, some say. That poor people walk in Houston is not a revelation. However, it is unconsciously making cars an instrument of punishment for the poor (forced to walk in a car-dominated hellscape), that is the dipshit behavior, and hell yes I'll judge Americans all day for being so cruel. It's anything but innate; you can't choose your skin color or sexual orientation, but you certainly can choose not to scream about removing a few street parking spots for an important bike lane.
The observation that Americans don't walk unless it's a special event comes from a lifetime of observing my fellow Americans. Hell, I watch my neighbors drive 4 blocks to the grocery store almost daily.
I figured it out a while back. It's a definitional mismatch. While you and I think about entry level as the level at which we enter a career, the companies think of entry level as the level at which somebody enters the company. They ditched any notion of social responsibility in the form of cultivating new workers long ago.