Over at
the Daily Caller, I think about an undercurrent of the 2012 presidential race: can we break out of the rut of the present?
We’re all familiar with the depressing statistics. Over three years with unemployment above 8%. A dropping labor-force participation rate. Persistently large and growing trade deficits. A collapse in family net-worth and family incomes. A lack of opportunity for America’s young people. Year after year after year of trillion-plus deficits. Social Security and Medicare going bankrupt even faster than expected.
An undercurrent of this election — one the Romney campaign has
grasped — is the debate about whether to accept as normal the past
decade’s hollowing out of the middle class and the downgrading of
prosperity. The “new normal” is one of skyrocketing gains for the few
and treading water for the many and a stagnation in growth for the
economy as a whole. This outcome is not necessarily the result of free
markets (indeed, it has taken considerable government intervention to
arrive at the current state), and it also imperils long-term growth: the
rich may have absorbed almost all the economic gains of the president’s anemic recovery, but the economic pie is smaller than it could have been.
