In 2024, for the first time in more than a century, governing parties in every developed country lost vote share. The White House changed residents, as did 10 Downing Street. President Emmanuel Macron’s group took a pounding in France, and Germany’s governing coalition collapsed. Even in India, Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s support ebbed. From country to country, the complaint often was the same: You just don’t deliver.
This failure is visible in the U.S., where Congress spent $42 billion in 2021 to wire rural America for broadband. Four and a half years later, the first two towers—one in Nebraska and one in Louisiana—went live. Last year it was reported that a multibillion-dollar program for electric-vehicle chargers, also started in 2021, had led to only a few hundred being installed. California’s high-speed rail, approved by voters in 2008, has no trains in service and only one remote segment under construction.