Agreed, even from the costs we can easily calculate it's obviously a massive drag on our economy, let alone the negative (in my opinion) effects on our culture. I think future generations will look on this America like we look at Easter Island now - a sort of inexplicable squandering of wealth and resources.
I think that if you do the same calculation to find the benefits (access to a greater variety of goods and services, access to a broader selection of employment, stable childhood environment due to not having to frequently move for work, etc.), the cost might not be as high. However, I have not seen any paper that attempted to account for this, so I cannot be sure.
You're right, there is this other side to the coin. I'm also not aware of research studying these high order effects. I wonder if you could apply the approach from the book Growing Artificial Societies, which is basically generative modeling of social organization, but I don't think that approach has a lot of academic support.
