The US doesn't want new domestic anything. We have made it nearly impossible to build housing, transmission lines, power plants, factories, etc. It seems like the only thing we still know how to do and also want to do is roads.
And maybe not.
>But the Texas Department of Transportation says converting paved roads to gravel is the only safe plan it can afford.
https://www.texastribune.org/2013/08/19/conversion-of-roads-...
> Omaha’s Answer to Costly Potholes? Go Back to Gravel Roads
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/07/us/omahas-answer-to-costl...
A pretty sad trend that keeps on growing.
America has lost the ability to build and maintain. It's slowly deconstructing and dismantling itself.
Now as more and more of the deferred maintenance bills come due, they have to make the hard decisions they should have made a long time ago.
People bet 10 x their yearly income on a property, and then they will do anything in their power to make that value rise, or at least not fall: NIMBYism. They will block any effort that potentially lowers the value of their property.
And I don't think you can blame them, as we can't expect them to voluntarily lose a lot of money.
Not to mention, the incredible 30 year fixed mortgage.
For additional context, there is very lax enforcement of home building standards for anything single family, both to encourage new construction and because the general principle is it will be torn down in 20-30 years, so why bother. This is of course also leads to a bit of a vicious cycle (which some see as wasteful) where it’s safer to tear down and build new because who knows how whatever you’re buying was built.
I have been living in Japan for the last 5 years, and the construction quality is absolutely abysmal here. Thermal and noise insulation is almost non-existant (very funny here in Aomori), and the overall layout of the cities and the houses is a complete mess.
I read recently that the government passed a new law forcing higher construction quality standards, but let's see what happens...
This is a myth. There's tons of demand for housing in Tokyo, and other large cities. There's no demand in small, remote towns, and the population is moving from rural areas to the big cities, plus there's more immigration, so demand hasn't fallen.
Oddly enough, according to this: https://resources.realestate.co.jp/living/how-affordable-is-... homes in the US are still more affordable than those in Japan.
I only did a quick search and clicked on the first result, btw, so take that with a boulder of salt.
I actually spent a significant part of my early career working with real estate economists.
A bunch of economists I know actually lost money fixing their mortgages in 2008. They fixed at too high a rate and weren't prepared for the low interest rates environment.
It's a direct consequence of NEPA privatising environmental review together with our lack of tort reform.
Except it's usually done in a more expensive and slower way than in other advanced economies
And military equipment.
Instead in Ukraine we have a proxy war where NATO countries are hesitant and reluctant to over commit.
Also, artillery shells is much cheaper way to deliver precise and fast strikes in urban environment compared to running aircrafts, so maybe such plans are not effective if this is really the plans.
Sorry, khikhil, zrada was baked in from the start. Link related.