Economists do not think of capital spending in terms of real-world numbers. They think of it as a concept in their models that self-equilibrates. There isn't an economist from Harvard to Stanford or anywhere in between who knows this chart. Believe me: I have worked with these people. If you as a reader are in business or in academe, try me out.
The only person in public life who understands this chart is Donald Trump. I cannot say he has literally looked at it, but he understands it.
Note that we are not talking about the "creative destruction of capitalism" here. We are not talking about no longer making buggy whips. We are talking about the staples of a modern economy, many of which we no longer have the capital equipment to manufacture.
We were the only country to emerge from World War II stronger than when we went into it, and our relative strength at the end of World War II was immeasurable. It became our policy, and then our unconscious attitude, to "help other countries get back on their feet." This attitude became a permanent part of our trade policy-making, wherein we essentially opened our markets to other countries while accepting that their markets were closed to us.
The chart shows that our ability to sustain the Lord Bountiful approach to trade ended forever in 2000, although nobody in power saw it until Donald Trump came along in 2016.
Among other things, this chart is the opioid epidemic – the despair created by permanent unemployment. The lack of capital investment is what has created the regions where people have dropped out of the workforce and thus are no longer counted as being in it.
The chart is a picture of the consequences of our defeat in the trade war. Only Trump – and American Thinker readers of this piece – know that we have experienced this defeat.
https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2018/08/why_is_trump_fighting_the_trade_war.html
