For the United States to be experiencing a “recovery” – as President Barack Obama assures us we are – it certainly doesn’t feel much like it.
The U.S. Commerce Department recently had to revise downward its estimate of the growth of America’s gross domestic product in the April-to-June period. GDP – which measures the nation’s total economic output – grew only 1.6 percent that quarter. An earlier estimate had put GDP growth at 2.4 percent.
The trouble is, neither figure is cause for celebration. Economic growth has to be in the 3 percent range just to keep unemployment from going up. So a GDP growth rate of only 1.6 percent is not good news. In fact, it may well mean that our current official unemployment rate of 9.5 percent is about to get even higher.
And that “official” rate of joblessness does not include the millions more Americans who are not counted in the figure because they have given up the search for work. It also does not include millions who have part-time work but need full-time.
Of course, there is a heated debate about whether our nation is in a “recovery” at all. Some believe we are experiencing or fast approaching the second half of a “double-dip” recession. That is a recession in which there is a brief interlude of apparent recovery, followed by more economic contraction. Others do not believe we have truly left the recession to begin with. That disagreement has to do with exactly how different economists and others define “recession” in the first place.
Whatever it is we are going through, it is hard to see how it can be called a durable recovery in any sense that the struggling American people can recognize.
Wouldn’t it make sense to re-evaluate whether the “stimulus” and bailout policies that were supposed to bring about real recovery are working – or whether they are, in fact, making things worse?