David Harsanyi looks at the “lost decade” of the last 10 years and finds not so much of a disaster:
Of the many tall tales spun by President Barack Obama during the State of the Union address this week, there is one, and perhaps only one, that most Americans believe to be true.
The old yarn goes something like this: A long time ago, the United States was an economic powerhouse. We built things with our hands and worked in factories and we loved it.
Our recent prosperity, on the other hand, was built on a house of cards — intellectual innovation, risk, free-wheeling markets and international trade — and nothing more than an illusion.
“We can’t afford another so- called economic expansion like the one from the last decade — what some call the ‘lost decade,’ ” Obama explained. The president went on to promise he would do all he could to stop any pesky so-called expansions in the future. And I believe him.
A recent poll shows that Obama is not alone in his aversion to the 2000s. According to a Pew Research Center poll, over 50 percent of American hold a negative view of the decade. Yet, the 2000s, like decades before it, are by nearly any measure — be it health, standard of living, the environment or technology — a success.
The average unemployment rate during this “lost decade” — including one of those unfortunate man-made disasters to the country’s financial center — was at 5.6 percent. One would think that the president — a man who believes a “jobs” bills that only saw unemployment go from nearly 8 percent to over 10 percent was a wild success — would be sort of impressed.
It may be a factor in any given decade, but it’s surprising how deep the short-term memories seem to be coloured by the recession at the end of the decade (the one we’re still struggling out of).
