Comment by ajmurmann

The problem is that things like houses and boats became political tokens and/or don't have the same profit scaling as software. Housing is mostly restricted by political opposition that made it very hard or even illegal to build much. Building ships is labor intensive which is expensive here, but AFAIK at least construction of navy ships has become a bargaining ship that gets moved around to support senators rather than being allocated to the most efficient place. In general it also seems like unions in the US are somehow more of a problem than in Europe or at least Germany where I grew up. They seem less powerful here but somehow less reasonable.