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Private fixed assets are things like machinery, computers, factories, power plants, housing–all the privately-owned productive assets of the country.  From 1999 to 2009, the real net stock of private fixed assets grew by 26%, the slowest 10-year increase in the post-war period, according to data from the Bureau of Economic Analysis.

That slow growth in real private fixed assets is bad enough.  What’s worse, housing accounted for the majority, 53%,  of the real increase in private fixed assets. By comparison, information technology equipment and software–computers, software, and communications equipment–only accounted for 14% of the increase in productive assets. If we toss in spending...