I came across an article by Bob Murphy looking at some of the claims in the third presidential debate, and trying to offer some rebuttals to the immediate criticisms that were engendered. That's an introduction to what I read, because in reality I don't really care about that part of it. What I did find interesting is where he offers a basic retort to all the people who think our economy is anything better than anemic. Specifically:
"However, Trump was not wrong for suggesting that the U.S. should have enjoyed—at least temporarily—growth rates of even 8 percent in the wake of the Great Recession, if indeed the government (and Federal Reserve) had enacted sound policies. Historically, the U.S. economy rebounded very strongly after a bad recession, at least partially making up for the lost output of the previous downturn...
Since the ostensible recovery began in the summer of 2009, only rarely has year-over-year U.S. real GDP growth bounced above 2.5 percent, and it has centered around 1.5 percent.
In stark contrast, going all the way back to World War II, GDP growth following a recession soared, albeit just briefly. Look, for example, at the early 1980s. In the first quarter of 1984, real GDP was 8.6 percent higher than it had been a year earlier.
The disparity in recovery growth rates is even more alarming when we consider that the depth of the Great Recession exceeded that of any other recession in the postwar era...
If the rhetoric from Obama and Clinton partisans were correct—namely, that the Great Recession had been caused by awful Republican policies which were fixed under Democratic rule—then we would have seen at least a few quarters of very high economic growth. Yet we have seen no such thing."
