[WS:] I think this the good old monopoly capitalism at work - the normal mode of operation of both the "old" and the "new" US economy - which is profiteering from artificially created transaction costs and manufactured inefficiency. The scheme works more or less like this:
First, the best government money can buy makes simple things as cumbersome as possible, usually by killing any advantages of the economies of scale. They do it, what else, for the "benefit" of the public by "removing government from people's backs" (translation: staunch resistance to regulation, public programs and investments) and by "promoting competition" (translation: making sure that there is myriad of market niches served by private providers).
Next, the Byzantine network of private providers steps in to "simplify" things for the people - for a hefty fee and monopoly profit of course. The obtuseness, complication, and fragmentation of the field creates ample opportunities for profiteering - the more complicated, fragmented and inefficient, the better.
Third, when the system becomes so Byzantine and expensive that few people can actually afford to use it, some well meaning do gooders will institute a public program to subsidize this vast network of parasitic service providers - for public good, of course.
So at the end, as the transaction costs i.e. inefficiencies mount, money keeps changing hands faster and faster, the GDP heads north and everyone is happy that capitalism provides an unsurpassed rate of economic growth. Few bother to ask - the growth of what? Parasitic "expediters" profiteering from artificially manufactured complications? Some growth indeed.
I do not think the US economy ever operated any different in principle. In the past, however, they had to manufacture something tangible, which created an impression of abundance, but as services replaced manufacturing in the "new" economy - the parasitic nature of this system becomes more and more evident. Basically the whole system "works" by selling remedies to the problems it deliberately created - a classical shakedown racket system.
Wojtek