Recovery Denied: Growth and Prosperity Continue to Go Their Separate Ways

from Dollars & Sense:


Recovery Denied
Growth and Prosperity Continue to Go Their Separate Ways

BY JOHN MILLER | MAY/JUNE 2014


A growth deficit surely has been one of the hallmarks of the U.S. economy since the end of the Great Recession. But the Wall Street Journal editors must not be paying attention if they think that doubling down on the pro-rich, free-market policies initiated during the Reagan administration is going to restore “forgone prosperity” for most people.

It’s not just a growth deficit that has plagued the U.S. economy, but also an equality deficit. The economic growth there has been during “this not so great recovery,” as the Journal editors call it, has gone overwhelming to the very richest and has done less to improve the economic well-being of the rest than during any economic recovery in the last sixty years.

This is not just a matter of a single recovery delayed. Economic growth and prosperity for most people parted company some three decades ago. Chanting the Journal editors’ mantra of “growth not redistribution” will only drive them further apart, consigning all but the very rich to an economic slump that persists even during economic recoveries.

Recovery Delayed

This recovery has surely been delayed. According to National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER), the nation’s arbiter of the business cycle, the Great Recession ended back in June 2009. By the official scorecard, the current recovery will hit the five-year mark this June, making it longer than the average recovery (58 months). But the economy has grown at about half of the pace of the average recovery since 1960, as the editors report, and is the slowest of all recoveries since 1950. .................(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.dollarsandsense.org/archives/2014/0514miller.html