In a post yesterday, I showed how public investment, net of depreciation, in the U.S. is barely above 0, meaning that fresh expenditures on long-lived assets like schools and roads are running just slightly ahead of the decay of existing infrastructure. You might think, given neoliberal orthodoxy, that the private sector is taking up the slack. It isn’t. The graph below shows net private nonresidential fixed investment as a percent of GDP. Net means less depreciation (the declining monetary value of existing assets over time, as they wear out and grow obsolete);… Read More