Economic Means
    Even this is more than money. It includes wealth, but also efficiency of operations in pursuing programs and opportunities to pursue productive programs and to avoid unproductive expenditures. the U.S. is favored by enormous economic means, in both absolute and relative terms.
 

Administrative Capability
    This is a resource that can be enhanced by training, organization, and culture. Still, in the U.S., it is a scarcer resource than economic means. This is a reason that budget enthusiasms fail, appropriately. They attempt to save economic resources by burdening administrative resources. This is a trade of a scarcer resource for a more plentiful resource.
    A reason for the scarcity is misguided training, reflecting a mistaken culture. The culture too often presumes zero-sum games, schooled by Monday Night football.
 

Political Capacity
    Probably the scarcest of the three resources, in the U.S. and elsewhere. Political Capacity expands with increases in Economic Means and Administrative Capability. It is consumed by democratic decision-making and by social conflict. The wider the range of issues that are decided by democratic processes (timing of traffic stoplights, distribution of wealth, etc.), the more the political capacity is stretched. Conflicts between ethnic, religious, or economic groups greatly burden the political capacity.
    The effectiveness of government reflects the ratio of political capacity to political burdens (of democratic decision making and of conflict). While the U.S. has relatively extensive political capacity, it places heavy burdens upon that capacity. A result is a common disappointment with effectiveness -- often based upon an unreasonable expectation, given commitments to democratic processes and to equality. An old piece, showing the recurring nature of this matter, used comparative (British and U.S.) politics to formulate and explore this ratio: