Give President Barack Obama credit for at least trying to diagnose and grapple with the economic crises of our era — slow growth, widening income inequality and diminished upward mobility. The deeper dilemma for him and the country is that his proposed solutions — largely, government stimuli of various sorts — aren’t working and might be inadequate to counter the huge forces at play: globalization, technological change and deterioration of social capital. As Republicans and conservative economists delight in pointing out, economic growth under Obama — averaging 2 percent a year — is the weakest for any recovery since World War II and is slowing, not accelerating. (more…)
