This economy has never really gotten back to normal:
By 2019, a prime measure of the economy’s health — gross domestic product per working-age adult — will likely have recovered less in the 12 years since the crisis began than it did during the 12 years since the start of the Great Depression. When I saw a chart making this point, in a new paper from Olivier Blanchard and Larry Summers, I was stunned. The chart is reproduced above.
Gross domestic product, or G.D.P., measures the nation’s total output, which largely determines its standard of living. And the decline in output during the Depression was clearly much worse than in recent years, as you can see from the gray line. But the economy eventually bounced back, first with rapid growth in the mid-1930s and then during the war mobilization of the early 1940s.
This time, the country never suffered 25 percent unemployment or nearly the same amount of misery — thank goodness — but it has endured years of weak growth following the crisis. You can see this weakness in the relatively flat yellow line.
By 2019, G.D.P. per working-age adult is likely to be only 11 percent higher than when the crisis began (barring an unexpected growth surge or a recession). That’s a miserable growth rate over an extended period. Yes, the economy has done fairly well for last year or two, but not nearly well enough to make up for the long slump, especially because growth was also mediocre in the early 2000s. No wonder so many Americans are angry and frustrated.
Careful what you wish for… that recovery spike is the war output for WWII. If you want to replicate that phenomenon I have a dream President in mind, and he just happens to be the current occupant.
Let’s not forget that the entire Republican party was standing on the brakes in an attempt to keep the Kenyan Usurper from chalking up any accomplishments. Even the Stimulus Package was in large part made up of tax breaks instead of actual spending.
So we got a weak recovery that the Republicans campaigned on. And they were rewarded for their efforts by getting control of everything.
Our current NAFTA economy of low wages and even lower expectations was delivered to us in 1994.
We all know who the president was in 1994.
The pro-corporate, interventionist neo-liberals in the Democratic Party have cooperated with the Capitalist Republicans in destroying FDR’s New Deal legislation since 1992.
War is Peace.
And very profitable.