It took a year to build the Empire State Building, and 5 years to build the Hoover Dam yet current estimates for the Francis Scott Key bridge rebuild are near 10 years. Why is this? Have we regressed?
In: Engineering
We outsourced most of our industrial and manufacturing base to China since the 1990s. Over time we’ve lost the ability to make a lot of stuff. Many of those blue collar workers from then are now retired or dead due to drug OD after they lost their job to China.
From the 2001 – 2020 the US/UK loved China when offshoring to China allowed them to break their labor unions, spurring disinflation that allowed US/UK to run “deficits without tears” and maintain the status of US dollars as global reserve currency and US treasuries as global reserve asset thereby enabling bankers to benefit from the Cantillon effect of those deficits.
Study the reality of a completely deindustrialized economy due to Triffin’s dilemma and Dutch disease. The US’ main export is US dollars.
The cost of the eurodollar/petrodollar system from 1974 to present is that by having so many entities around the world hold dollar-denominated assets it artificially increases the purchasing power of the US dollar. The extra monetary premium reduces the US’ export competitiveness and gradually hollows out the US’ industrial base. To supply the world with the dollars it needs the US runs a perpetual trade deficit. The power granted to the reserve currency issuer is also over decades what begins to poison it and render it unfit to maintain its status.
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