The Financial Times coverage is particularly terrifying, pinning almost all economic growth to "a handful of states, artificial intelligence, healthcare and the wealthy".

It also notes that health care isnt productive. It's a measure of societal overhead, basically. Yet that was by far one of the largest sources for new jobs.

https://archive.ph/2025.09.08-053701/https://www.ft.com/cont...

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blackjack_ a day ago | parent | next [-]

Yeah, reading the FT article, it claims “Healthcare, technology and real estate are expanding, while financial services, retail and hospitality are treading water”.

Much of real estate is also a net drag that isn't productive...

	▲	alephnerd a day ago \| parent [-]
		Most of the Real Estate capex over the last few years has been in manufacturing real estate such as factories, or infra spending such as data centers. Both those have value at a macro-level, and are largely a result of IIJA, IRA, and CHIPS act era subsidies, though CHIPS act adjacent spend was "AI-washed" which helped extend adjacent industries capex. I've previously called out this kind of AI-washing as well [0] - it reminds me of the Telecom Bubble during the 1990s-2000s. [0] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44069086

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alephnerd a day ago | parent | prev [-]

I posted that article yesterday on HN, but got no engagement [0].

It is absolutely worrisome, and does connect with my own personal experience visiting other states for work - there is a slowdown in most states aside from those with large diversified economies like CA, TX, NY, FL, and NC that also benefited from the IRA [1], IIJA, and CHIPS [2] act.

Those states with moderate expansion like PA, OH, IN, AZ, and SC are also those that had manufacturing industries that benefited from the IRA [0], IIJA, and CHIPS [2] act.

The states marked as "Treading Water" or "In Recession" didn't receive significant economic stimulus on a per capita basis (eg. Clean energy jobs created in GA vs IN were similar despite GA receiving double the amount of IRA funding and GA having almost 1.7x the population of Indiana) and lack diversified or semi-diversified economies

[0] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45160699

[1] - https://www.governing.com/infrastructure/map-which-states-ar...

[2] - https://www.eiu.com/n/us-election-its-impact-on-industrial-p...