Slow growth has been in the forefront of the candidates’ concerns about the economy throughout this presidential campaign. They’re right to point it out: Whatever your view of the past several years, America’s economic growth is not what it used to be. Our real gross domestic product roared along from 1947 to 1974, growing an average of 3.8 percent per year, and slowed only slightly until 2004. But since then, it’s dropped by half. Today’s economy, growing at a sluggish 1.6 percent per year, has been described using an old term inherited from the 1930s, “secular stagnation.”
American Growth Has Slowed Down. Get Used to It.
