World capitalism’s slow-burning depression

Average annual per capita GDP growth

In 2016 most working people would laugh in derision and disgust at a presidential claim about “the eight best years we’ve had in modern history.” But that hasn’t stopped Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton from saying preposterous things like the economy is “pretty darn great right now” (Obama, March 2016), or “our economy is so much stronger” since Obama was elected (Clinton at the July 2016 Democratic convention).

The facts tell a different story. Since 2006, US economic growth per person (that is, the yearly change in what the government calls Gross Domestic Product, or GDP) has fallen sharply from the nearly 4 percent averaged over the previous fifty years. The per capita growth rate since 2006 has averaged less than 0.5 percent — yes, less than half a percent per person per year. And US capitalism is doing better than most of its imperialist rivals in Europe and in the Pacific and Asia.

Moreover, real gross domestic investment in capacity expanding plant, equipment, and hiring has contracted since before the 2008-09 crisis, as has spending on roads, mass transportation, and other infrastructure by local, state, and federal governments.

— from The Clintons’ Anti-Working-Class Record