Inflation Reduction Act

In Kyle’s notes the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) surfaces only in The Build-Nothing Country, Noah Smith’s argument that America’s failure to build isn’t a money problem but a broken permitting, land-use, and development system. The IRA’s roughly $400B green-energy allocation is the article’s clearest illustration of that thesis: despite the money being appropriated, solar and wind projects still face NIMBY opposition and supply-chain bottlenecks (the latter aggravated by Biden’s China-sourcing restrictions). The point is that dollars don’t translate into built projects when the surrounding system blocks them — the same frame the article applies to Climate Change.

Context: The Inflation Reduction Act is a 2022 U.S. federal law that paired deficit-reduction and prescription-drug provisions with the largest clean-energy and climate investment in U.S. history, channeling hundreds of billions in tax credits and subsidies toward solar, wind, batteries, EVs, and domestic manufacturing.

Where this appears

• The Build-Nothing Country — the ~$400B green-energy allocation as Exhibit A that funding alone can’t produce built projects when permitting, NIMBY opposition, and China-sourcing restrictions stall them