On the contrary; that's a component of my entire argument.
The US and the concept of a developed economy both started at Square 1 around the same time. That's a huge structural advantage. Developing or selling some new technology? No laws. Let's write one; with the input of the businesses doing the development. Other companies had to update their infrastructure over time; we green-fielded it. Much cheaper. Opening a factory? Take a thousand acres of land in the west, no one is using it, take it. Raw materials? An entire content worth of them, virtually untouched by the natives.
Those are all structural advantages which helped fuel the hyper-accelerated growth the US experienced throughout the past two centuries.
And the broader point is, every day that goes by everyone gets older; including the US itself. New businesses contend with more laws and regulations. Infrastructure was built without a plan for how to pay for its maintenance. The land is claimed, and the new owners want a million bucks for it.
That's the reversion to the global mean; that now, we're dealing with a lot of the same shit everyone else is and has been for centuries.
I can't find a good chart for this but the GDP of the EU and the US were almost at par until 2008, after which there was a massive decoupling. The main difference in the EU's and US's response is the level of austerity each engaged in. The US's response, while certainly not ideal, was significantly better than the EU's response.
>> The tax system and other incentives lead people to not really work their hardest and best, and this propagates all the way to the stock indexes
I used to be a believer in this. But I recently moved from Sweden to UK, from a very socialist country to a very capitalist one.
In capitalist societies people live in survival mode. This doesn't work well in every profession, especially managerial roles become very predatory. It does work well in tech/individual contributor roles though.
Some mundane tasks that are needed for tech development to go smoothly over long periods of time, is easier to manage in socialist Sweden. Whereas in UK, I suspect in US too, people tend to gloss over mundane managerial processes/goals like scrum, roadmap planning, business goals etc.
The US and the concept of a developed economy both started at Square 1 around the same time. That's a huge structural advantage. Developing or selling some new technology? No laws. Let's write one; with the input of the businesses doing the development. Other companies had to update their infrastructure over time; we green-fielded it. Much cheaper. Opening a factory? Take a thousand acres of land in the west, no one is using it, take it. Raw materials? An entire content worth of them, virtually untouched by the natives.
Those are all structural advantages which helped fuel the hyper-accelerated growth the US experienced throughout the past two centuries.
And the broader point is, every day that goes by everyone gets older; including the US itself. New businesses contend with more laws and regulations. Infrastructure was built without a plan for how to pay for its maintenance. The land is claimed, and the new owners want a million bucks for it.
That's the reversion to the global mean; that now, we're dealing with a lot of the same shit everyone else is and has been for centuries.