The US also has much less state capacity. We've thrown 50 billion at California high speed rail and are struggling to even get that built. We could spend 3 tril

The US also has much less state capacity. We've thrown 50 billion at California high speed rail and are struggling to even get that built. We could spend 3 trillion, and still wouldn't be able to outperform China spending 300 billion. For our 3 trillion, we'd end up with vast dysfunctional bureaucracies. Which is not to say that all American bureaucracies are ineffective. There are some effective ones in the private sector (SpaceX, Tesla). But they are accidental and can't be forced to grow out of the ground even if the U.S. waters the soil with cash. Passively creating an environment where good bureacracies can rise up spontaneously is very different from being able to point your finger and say "build this efficiently". We have lost the ability to do the latter, and the existence of the former is hiding this fact. If we had to do something like the Manhattan Project or Apollo Program today, we wouldn't have a chance of it succeeding, no matter how much money we threw at it. And I still doubt California will be able to complete a high speed rail link from LA to San Francisco, even if it spends 400 billion.