Have a gander at this mind-boggling chart put together by Mike Mandel.
It shows the share of real growth of private fixed assets – stuff like machinery, factories, technological equipment, and, yep, housing. Or, as Mandel puts it: “All the privately owned productive assets of the country – for the decade spanning 1999 to 2009.”
That decade, Mandel points out, saw the slowest growth of any decade of the post-war period. What’s worse, more than half of it was made up of housing. Technology broadly accounted for just 14 percent of the increase. ”[T]he net real increase in housing fixed assets was more than triple the net real increase in IT fixed assets,” Mandel concludes. “That may help explain why we are in such dire straits now — plenty of new homes, not enough investment in IT.”
To read the full, original article click on this link: Creative Class » Blog Archive » Where Did All the “Growth” Go? - Creative Class
Author: Richard Florida
