August 4, 2016

America's Great Disappointment


So the Wall Street Journal asks today,"Why [Is] This Recovery Is So Lousy"?

They say that with Obama, "No president was ever better positioned to lead a strong recovery...no resources were spared...yet not once in the last seven years has annual economic growth ever reached [even] 3%."

But the news gets worse, in fact, "U.S. GDP grew a disappointing 1.2% in the second quarter...[and] economic growth is now tracking at a 1% rate in 2016...that makes for an average annual 2.1% rate since the end of the recession."

And that is after Obama's $836 billion stimulus and $3 trillion in Federal reserves injected into the economy!

The Great Recession may be the most disastrous economic results short of the Great Depression itself.

However, this is not the only reason Americas are disappointed with what they are getting from Washington (and we won't even talk about the candidates).

80% say we are heading in the wrong direction!  Let's repeat that again, 80% say we are heading in the wrong direction.

Harvard Business Review says it's not just the economy stupid, since we still [despite ourselves--with failing policies of enormous tax and spend and over-regulation] rank #5 on GDP per capita. 

Yet that doesn't translate into overall social progress for us.

Get this, the U.S. ranks 19th in social progress in the world--just one place above Slovena!

Why???

- We rank 26th on personal rights because of restrictions on freedoms like the right of assembly. 

- We rank 27th on personal safety because of high homicides and poor road safety.

- We rank 36th on environmental quality because of high greenhouse gases and poor water quality.

- We rank 40th on basic knowledge because of poor education and high dropout rates.

- We rank 68th on health and wellness because of suicides, obesity, cancer, and heart disease.

HBR points out that there may be individual reasons for each of these, but overall this is a bleak "troubling picture" and Trump isn't the one who painted it.

The sad fact is that one of the only things that the U.S. is ranking #1 in the world in is our national debt to everyone else...and this is being squandered. 

Think good and hard about the nation you are leaving your children and grandchildren...this is a horrible performance scorecard for America, the superpower!  ;-)

(Source of the amazing photo: Minna Blumenthal)
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