The Economy is Stagnant, Not "Booming"

Last week, while attending an economics conference in Washington, I discovered one particularly clear sign of the economy's struggles -- namely, that it keeps performing worse than the experts have predicted.

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Over time, the differences between the experts' predictions and the economy's performance have added up. The American economy would be about 6 percent larger today -- producing $1.3 trillion more in goods and services this year -- if the forecasts had come true. And for most families, real-life experience has been more disappointing than the G.D.P. numbers, because much of the bounty of the economy's growth has flowed to the affluent.

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The 2017 Trump tax [was] is a dreadful piece of economic policy -- essentially a giant effort to aggravate income inequality. Tax cuts that benefit the wealthy most are huge and permanent. Tax cuts focused on everyone else are smaller and temporary... A better policy response would start with a tax cut focused on the majority of Americans, not the wealthy. And there are many other ways to take on secular stagnation... Infrastructure projects, to jump-start investment. The retirement of coal-fired power plants, which would also lead to new investment. Stronger safety-net programs, including Social Security, to reduce the savings glut. More aggressive antitrust policies, to combat monopolies. And a Federal Reserve that, at long last, stopped making the same mistake -- of overestimating both growth and inflation.