[nlperguiy]

There are limits to growth. The infrastructure bubble is cracking.

No one was there to think through the long term investment in infrastructure.

The prices have skyrocketed due to regulation and now the government can't pay for all that regulated work.

Similar thing will happen in EU. Pipes are failing all across the western world.

[maxerickson]

Our ability to produce material goods (even in the supposedly hollowed out US manufacturing sector) really is greater than at any time in history. We aren't crashing into any growth limit when it comes to infrastructure.

The problem is that taxes have been cut and costs like pensions have gone up (both in absolute terms from things like favorable contracts and life expectancy and in relative terms because of the tax cuts).

[droro]

Our ability to produce manufactured goods has very little to do with our ability to build infrastructure.

Construction productivity in the U.S. is actually DROPPING:

https://www.economist.com/blogs/graphicdetail/2017/08/daily-...

https://www.mckinsey.com/industries/capital-projects-and-inf...

http://harvardcgbc.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/Wang_2Page...

[maxerickson]

Right, but per worker productivity in the construction industry isn't a growth limit (the claim I was addressing), it is something else.

[bob_theslob646]

>Our ability to produce material goods (even in the supposedly hollowed out US manufacturing sector) really is greater than at any time in history

Can you provide a source ?

The only thing I could find is this

>The Institute for Supply Management said Friday that its manufacturing index slipped to 58.2 last month from 58.7 in October. Anything above 50 signals that U.S. factories are expanding. American manufacturing is on a 15-month winning streak.

Nothing on it being the greatest time in history, I believe that was during and after the 2nd world war, but I could be wrong.

[maxerickson]

https://www.marketwatch.com/story/us-manufacturing-dead-outp...

Search "us manufacturing output history" if that isn't sufficient.

It makes plenty of sense, even if the postwar era was a boom, the US population is much larger and external markets are much larger and richer.

[bob_theslob646]

It is not sufficient. That article is talking about manufacturing being the most dominant share in terms of sector. I am not disagreeing with that whatsoever. People complain about that because there are less jobs in manufacturing then there has ever been before.(Processes get more efficient, do not need as many people. This is a fact and not necessarily a bad thing.)

That marketwatch article is somewhat skewed because it only talks about the US domestically versus how it does relative to the world.

How about you take a stab at looking through this.

https://fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/R42135.pdf page 5

>Congressional Research Service: U.S. Manufacturing in International Perspective

>The United States’ share of global manufacturing activity declined from 28% in 2002, following the end of the 2001 U.S. recession, to 16.5% in 2011. Since then,the U.S. share has risen to 18.6%, the largest share since 2009. These estimates are based on the value of each country’s manufacturing in U.S. dollars; part of the decline in the U.S. share was due to a 23% decline in the value of the dollar between 2002 and 2011, and part of the rise since 2011 is attributable to a stronger dollar

>The U.S. share of global manufacturing value added has declined over time, from 29% in the early 1980s to 18.6% in 2015 (see Figure 2). Similarly, Japan’s share of global manufacturing value added has contracted from a peak of 21.5% in 1995 to around 7% now, and Germany’s has fallen from 10.4% (in 1992, just after the incorporation of the former German Democratic Republic into the Federal Republic of Germany) to 5.9%.

[maxerickson]

It's boldfaced:

Surprising Fact No. 2: Manufacturing output is a near a record high.

The decline of the global share of output is true, but it is sort of inevitable that ~5% of the global population will not maintain a vast share of global output. I'm also not terribly interested in arguing about whether Our ability to produce material goods really is greater than at any time in history. was a valid response to the post I responded too.

[nlperguiy]

Yet still, bridges, roads, piping cost more to build than ever before.

[bradgessler]

    The prices have skyrocketed due to regulation 
    and now the government can't pay for all that 
    regulated work.

This would be really interesting to understand in more detail. Does anybody know if attempts have been made at quantifying these costs specifically for infrastructure?

[StudentStuff]

Basically, in suburban sprawl areas where a 3 story building is a rare site, we generally have a lot of infrastructure for a small population. This costs money to maintain, and the tax base is nowhere near large enough to fund such upkeep.

Part of this is caused by parking minimums requiring half or more of any commercial lot be paved (forcing buildings further apart and causing excess parking to be built, and in residential settings this is caused by zoning and minimum lot and building size regulations.

All this causes a magnitude more infrastructure to be built to service this sprawl, from roadways to water, gas, power and sewer pipes.

[rocqua]

Strong towns has a whole section dedicated to this issue [0]. Sadly I couldn't find a decent summary. I think this article of the site [1] is the closest thing.

[0] https://www.strongtowns.org/infrastructure/

[1] https://www.strongtowns.org/the-growth-ponzi-scheme/