Yeah, America can still build stuff
Marc Dunkelman has a new book coming out next month called Why Nothing Works. His thesis is that America once did big things but now seems stuck—and much of it is the fault of progressives:
America is today the victim of a vetocracy that allows nearly anyone to stifle progress. While conservatives deserve some blame, progressives have overlooked an unlikely culprit: their own fears of “The Establishment.” A half-century ago, progressivism’s designs on getting stuff done were eclipsed by a desire to box in government.
This has become such a common critique that it's now practically conventional wisdom. But before we accept it, we need to know at least two things:
I'm going to try to assess both of those things as honestly as possible. What follows, I'm afraid, is immensely long. I got carried away. But the charts are all super simple and you should be able to scroll through them fairly quickly. Let's start with various categories of construction.
In simple dollar terms, construction spending has grown steadily over the past 30 years. As a percent of GDP, it recovered from the Great Recession a few years ago and is now back to its pre-bubble average. Any way you look at it, we're building a lot of stuff.
