America is not just going to start building again. The whole of American culture has become oriented to the service economy. Finance, management, politics, public discourse, etc, all now serve the service economy. Nobody has a clue how to 'get back to building' again.
People talk like you can just restore America back to an old save point. "We've just got to do what we did in the 40s and 50s. We did it back then and we can do it now." But even the exhortation betrays the problem: the problem is now just seen in terms of marketing slogans.
Back when America did build, there was pervasive interest in building, the management of large projects, etc; it was all-encompassing cultural phenomenon. Everything that fed into that has been gutted and replaced with ideas that feed the marketing-oriented service economy.
The problem is similar to demographic decline. All of the institutions that supported family-formation were guttered but all the new culture can supply as 'solutions' are maternity leave, tax breaks, and, if you're really daring, a marketing campaign exhorting people to 'breed!'
