In April 2020, the venture capitalist Marc Andreessen published a widely read essay titled “It’s Time to Build.” For all its supposed dynamism, the U.S. economy appeared slow and inflexible in the face of a once-in-a-generation crisis. Masks and ventilators were in short supply, but this inability to rapidly adjust wasn’t specific to Covid-19: America had long struggled to build housing, high-speed rail, and zero-emission sources of power, too. Andreessen’s critique crystallized something numerous scholars and commentators had been saying, and it had fans across the political spectrum. There was much less agreement on how we’d gotten here, however. Was it cultural malaise? Broken political institutions? Too much regulation? People seemed to agree that the U.S. had lost some essential dynamism, but couldn’t agree why.
Why Economies Become Less Dynamic as They Age
Mancur Olsen’s 1982 classic, “The Rise and Decline of Nations,” offers a startling lens on what’s gone wrong with the U.S. economy.
September 23, 2022
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Summary.
Covid-19 revealed the limits of the U.S. economy and the ways it wasn’t as dynamic as many had thought. For years, the U.S. has struggled to build new things, from roads to railways to housing, but analysts have struggled to explain why. But a canonical book by the political economist Mancur Olson offers an answer: As economies age, lobbyists and interest groups slow everything down. Olson’s book The Rise and Decline of Nations is being republished this year, with a new introduction. And it’s sparking a new debate over what went wrong with the U.S. economy.