For twenty years, we’ve been accelerating innovation at warp speed while slowing production of physical goods to a crawl. Think of it as America having a Ferrari engine strapped to a 1970s pickup truck frame. The mind is racing ahead, but the real-world muscles that make things—houses, roads, power grids, factories—are exhausted, underbuilt, and way behind.

If you were ever going to take a shot at building something of your own — a business, a brand, a mission — this is your moment. Not 1995. Not 2008. Not “once things calm down.” Right now. We live in an era where someone can wake up in their apartment, throw on sweatpants, make coffee, fire up their laptop, and by lunchtime be running a company that reaches people in all 50 states. That wasn’t possible 20 years ago. It wasn’t even close.

For years, economists have warned about inflation, federal debt, market bubbles, and recessions. But there’s a bigger economic storm forming quietly in the background—one that could reshape everything from Social Security to housing markets to stock returns: a collapsing population growth rate.