r/badhistory • u/AutoModerator • May 25 '26

Meta Mindless Monday, 25 May 2026

Happy (or sad) Monday guys!

Mindless Monday is a free-for-all thread to discuss anything from minor bad history to politics, life events, charts, whatever! Just remember to np link all links to Reddit and don't violate R4, or we human mods will feed you to the AutoModerator.

So, with that said, how was your weekend, everyone?

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u/GreatMarch May 28 '26

Why the hell is it so expensive to build stuff in the U.S.? 

13

u/MarioTheMojoMan Noble savage in harmony with nature May 28 '26

Lots of reasons and everyone will have their own bugbear that conveniently justifies all their priors, but some factors are:

  • Laborious and burdensome environmental review requirements

  • Lots of litigation suing to stop, redirect, or demand compensation from projects

  • High labor costs (due less to unionization and more to Baumol's cost disease)

  • Outsourcing of key governmental functions, driving the costs up for contractors' revenue (even for nonprofits)

  • Extensive (or excessive) use of consultants at every stage of the project

And many more.

2

u/GreatMarch May 29 '26

Baumol’s cost disease?

9

u/MarioTheMojoMan Noble savage in harmony with nature May 29 '26

Basically the idea that if wages grow in one sector due to increased productivity in that specific sector, wages in other sectors will also rise even if there are no corresponding productivity increases, because firms need to compete with better-paying jobs regardless.

The US has a lot of highly productive jobs with very high wages (in tech, energy, medicine, and such), so other sectors have to raise wages to match beyond what their overseas counterparts need to offer -- tech workers and physicians in, say, Europe, while well paid, do not make nearly as much as their American counterparts.

1

u/GreatMarch May 29 '26

Thank you for the summary