EVEN AS THE US ECONOMY PRODUCES MORE JOBS AND HIGHER WAGES, SOMEHOW CAPITALISM STAYS BROKEN. WEIRD:
Today’s populists overindulge in unwarranted economic nostalgia. For them, the immediate postwar decades were when America was really great. But maybe it’s a more recent period that they should be pining for. If you’re trying to make the case that “capitalism is broken,” then the Great Recession of 2007-2009 was your big moment. Capitalism seemed shattered, not just broken. It looked like this sucker was going down, to paraphrase President George W. Bush.
But then the economy started to recover, slowly but steadily. Indeed, the US expansion hit the 10-year mark this month and is on the verge of its longest-run on record if things stay on track through July. An economy that’s producing gobs of jobs every month — a total of 20 million since 2010 — as it grows year after year is a dodgy example of broken capitalism.
But there will always be leftists, particularly journalists, oddly enough, with a severe case of “Depression Lust,” as Virginia Postrel dubbed it in December of 2008.