US Can't Build Things Anymore

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One of the many reasons of America's economic decline is the amount of government intervention in the business process from Washington to Main Street. Look in the American Industrial revolution free markets were Free Markets, government regulation was minimal, incentive was high do to no income tax. This existed up to 1913, with Incentive being diminished do to income tax. The empire state building was built because the building department was less intrusive and government employees followed simple straight forward local laws and regulations. Not today, all that is gone, we as American producers have to go through too much bureaucracy, and when finally ready opportunity is diminished if not irrelevant. The fortunes of the Fords, Carnegies, DuPonts, Rockefellers', Kaisers, and more were built without income tax, like today tax code is adjusted to those with wealth to retain wealth, but the cost of it is higher ergo not as efficient as it was. Legislation on product liability, building code, environment, etc makes the process in-surmountable. So here we are stuck in Mud, what is needed is not being address at all, Revision if not a total re-write of income tax, and taxation in general, and decisions on we have the will to eliminate inefficient and unproductive laws designed to be anti economic growth. Early on in this Depression I made suggestions to the Bush and later Obama Administrations' that a quick hit to the economy would be a suspension of all tax for one year. That's about $1 Trillion dollars, in that time, our elected officials working for 1$ per year can spend the year unwinding or trashing the system that has been built and restart American again. Unless we do this our Creditors will do it for us, this time under force of arms.

There is a new bridge that carries the traffic to Las Vegas that once went over the Hoover Dam that proves that Jonah Goldberg sometimes overstates his case. The bridge was built from both ends over the canyon, the concrete was cast-in-place and had to meet in the middle within one-eight of an inch.

Big engineering jobs are complex, but you have to start somewhere or nothing will ever get built.

Building codes and workers conditions were far laxer in those days. The Empire State Building had more worker deaths than you'd be able expect in a modern building. The Ground Zero site is also the most complicated building site in NYC- you have subway lines going under a very large site that was covered with toxic debris, all while 4 skyscrapers, a museum, and other infrastructure is going up.