You just named symptoms not cause.

1. People vote for old idiots .

2. Local politics is all about milking any potential work with permits. Sky rocket housing due to that .

3. American lost engineering culture everywhere except software . Now software is dead as industry we used to know

Personally I think those are also symptoms. In my opinion, the cause is:

1. Easy money for far, far, far too long in the US and a complete political unwillingness to take any risk of a recession, no matter the long-term cost required to stave it off. In my mind, this explains the rich-poor gap, the rise of crypto, insane valuations, house-price inflation, the weird delta between US and rest-of-world standard of living/salaries, and probably even the migration crisis.

> American lost engineering culture everywhere except software

microprocessor design : Apple Silicon and lately Intel Panther Lake and later?

> People vote for old idiots .

i think this is also a syndrome not a cause