In a 2022 interview, then-Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg discussed how we was going to spend $1.2 trillion of taxpayer money from the recently passed infrastructure bill.
“The main thing I’m thinking about,” he said, “is how do we make sure we take all this money— you know it’s $1.2 trillion— and actually deliver $1.2 trillion dollars worth of value. . .”
That whole way of thinking is just astonishing.
If you invest $1 million in a business, you’re obviously going to expect that the CEO will deliver a lot more than $1 million in value from that investment. In fact a good executive will be able to turn a $1 million investment into tens or hundreds of millions of dollars in value.
But a couple years ago, when he was still Transportation Secretary, Pete encapsulated the government’s approach to investing. They’re not looking to get a 100x, 10x, or even 2x return.
To them, it’s quite an accomplishment to simply get X, i.e. to spend $1 trillion dollars efficiently enough to simply see $1 trillion of value.
If Pete had been a private sector investment manager, he would have been fired that very day.
I bring this up because the Commerce Department released fourth quarter GDP numbers yesterday, and their report showed that the US economy grew in “real terms” by 2.8% in 2024.
2.8% “real” GDP growth essentially means that the US economy produced 2.8% more goods and services in 2024 than it did in 2023. It strips out any impact of inflation.
But remember— America’s population grows by about 1% per year. And those are just the people in the country legally. If you include the folks who waltz across the southern border illegally, then the total population growth rate is easily 2% or more.
Hellbound and Down 