Why American Construction Costs Are So High

I think the inability of politicians to have a real conversation about costs is a big part of high construction costs. Without this sort of difficult conversation it's hard to plan and try to mitigate things that might cause ballooning costs because you need to pretend that don't exist in the first case.

This increases costs due to risk of lawsuits/challenges and excessive amounts of money put towards mitigating this risk. This continues from procurement through design and through construction. Environmental concerns have ironically been coopted into this category by NIMBY folks.

1. Construction unions in New York, specifically, cause horrific and unjustifiable cost increases.

2. But unions in most of the country aren't in New York, and don't have the same power that NY unions do.

3. The problem is that New York is responsible for a lot of construction, and more sensible areas unthinkingly copy New York's awful, union-driven policies -- those other areas don't need to do things New York's way, but they don't have enough construction experience to know better.

The author goes on to say that union-busting politics as they exist in the US won't solve the problem, but obviously believes that unions are responsible for significant parts of it. (And in fact says in so many words that in the absence of particularized US politics, union-busting would be somewhere from neutral to productive.)

An immediate implication is that if you're worried about getting things built in New York, you should be trying to break up the unions there.

I'd wager that "internal customers" aren't buying donuts to accompany their permits and doing all the other borderline corruption type things you need to do in order to get government do work with you in a timely manner.

Edit: Having the person at the desk remember your company as "the one that brings donuts" and the mid-level manager remembering your company as "the one that sponsored my son's little league team" don't has the potential to make a massive difference. For a company that does a lot of business with government spending a few grand a year making sure the people of government see you in a positive light is well worth it.