This! So we under invest, and since the 80s have completely shat on public works and relied on private contracting & consulting to get things done.

Ideally we would reinstate the Ministry of Public Works and then slowly ramp up the spend on that $100B investment to give time to rebuild the experience and expertise that will eventually give us better value for the spend.

I read an article a few months ago, can't find it now unfortunately, but it was arguing that making simple GDP comparisons between countries was getting harder as the purchasing power in different countries is so different. What we spend building a road vs Asian countries per km is kinda eye opening.