- Thu Jul 09, 2015 9:23 pm
#60368
Here we go again, more of the same Bush bullshittery. Consensus for GDP growth is 2.0 - 2.5%, now Bush is claiming 4%.
Jeb Bush pledged Monday to give the U.S. an economic growth rate of 4 percent a year — a goal that many economists regard as ambitious at best and most likely unrealistic for any lengthy sustained period.
“There is not a reason in the world why we cannot grow at a rate of 4 percent a year,” Bush said as he formally announced his presidential bid in Miami. “And that will be my goal as president — 4 percent growth, and the 19 million new jobs that come with it.”
But while 4 percent growth can last for years at the state level, it has never been anything approaching the norm in U.S. economic history, even during the boom years that followed World War II. “I can go back 200 years,” said Claudia Goldin, an economic historian at Harvard, “and not get anything like this in a sustained manner.”
“Four percent for a decade?” asks economist Robert Gordon of Northwestern. “Impossible.”
Gordon, who is notably pessimistic about future prospects for economic growth, says even 3 percent growth is unlikely for the future. It was the norm during the three decades prior to 2004, he wrote in an email, “only because of two factors that will not happen again: the historic entry of women into the labor force and the productivity impact of the invention of the Internet.”
Jeb Bush pledged Monday to give the U.S. an economic growth rate of 4 percent a year — a goal that many economists regard as ambitious at best and most likely unrealistic for any lengthy sustained period.
“There is not a reason in the world why we cannot grow at a rate of 4 percent a year,” Bush said as he formally announced his presidential bid in Miami. “And that will be my goal as president — 4 percent growth, and the 19 million new jobs that come with it.”
But while 4 percent growth can last for years at the state level, it has never been anything approaching the norm in U.S. economic history, even during the boom years that followed World War II. “I can go back 200 years,” said Claudia Goldin, an economic historian at Harvard, “and not get anything like this in a sustained manner.”
“Four percent for a decade?” asks economist Robert Gordon of Northwestern. “Impossible.”
Gordon, who is notably pessimistic about future prospects for economic growth, says even 3 percent growth is unlikely for the future. It was the norm during the three decades prior to 2004, he wrote in an email, “only because of two factors that will not happen again: the historic entry of women into the labor force and the productivity impact of the invention of the Internet.”
