Construction Manager Shreds Abundance Book

Yup. Good caller. And just resonates with the "We just need to build more houses" when the market does what's profitable, not what's necessary.

Totally agree with Ralph. Having worked in the construction supply industry for far too many years. I saw one construction job delayed. That was when a GC for one of the largest companies failed to get a construction permit. Go figure. The answer as I see it. Tax private equity firms investing in homes out of existence.

Derek Thompson literally said, "I'm not anti-oligarchy. I'm just not." When he was on John Stewart's podcast. To me that's all you need to know.

All the homies getting granular

Average profit for a commercial construction project in the 90s was 5% and investors would have been over the moon with 10%, in 2023 the average profit for a commercial construction project was 20.5% so a profit margin of 30% doesn't seem uncommon nowadays. Hey I think I just figured out the affordability problem! Quick someone needs to call Ezra and let him know before he makes a fool of himself!

I'm a construction PM for a GC in the DC area. When he said AECOM I had a seizure. I thought I was healed from the pain they've inflicted on me.

My old boss had several government contracts and would brag how he was milking the govt for every dollar they were willing to pay and over charging everything on purpose

Always love it when MR has a caller who knows their stuff.

Shows like this need to seek out guests like this more often.

There was a whole passage in the book about how it's BAD that we have private contractors doing a lot of the work on high speed rail because they UNDERESTIMATE the timelines and cost, which is why they say we should increase state capacity by hiring and building expertise internally within the government so that it can do more stuff.