Economic Blues Define Campaign

This story was originally published on nationaljournal.com on April 18, 2016 Grow­ing up in the South, I learned the ex­pres­sion, “When Momma ain’t happy, ain’t nobody happy.” This year, it seems that we are all Mom­mas, ‘cause ain’t nobody happy. People are un­happy for dif­fer­ent reas­ons, but there is a com­mon thread. Wheth­er you are listen­ing to sup­port­ers of Bernie Sanders or Don­ald Trump, you de­tect a very strong eco­nom­ic com­pon­ent. The latest Blue Chip Eco­nom­ic In­dic­at­ors sur­vey of 52 top eco­nom­ists shows that Gross Do­mest­ic Product is ex­pec­ted to grow just 2 per­cent this year, sig­ni­fic­antly be­low the av­er­age of 3.24 per­cent from 1947 through 2015. Two per­cent growth does not cre­ate a lot of jobs, and it doesn’t gen­er­ate a lot of new tax rev­en­ue. Ob­vi­ously it beats neg­at­ive eco­nom­ic growth, but the re­cov­ery that star­ted in 2009 has been pretty un­der­whelm­ing. A couple of years ago, a Gold­man Sachs eco­nom­ist called it a “tor­toise re­cov­ery.” But it isn’t just that the re­cov­ery is mov­ing slowly, it is also mov­ing at a much slower rate than was ex­pec­ted