Seven Unsustainable Processes: Medium-Term Prospects and Policies for the United States and the World

Abstract

The US economy has now been expanding for nearly eight years, the budget is in surplus, and inflation and unemployment have both fallen substantially. In February the Council of Economic Advisers (1999) forecast that GDP could grow by 2.0 to 2.4% between now and the year 2005, and this forecast has since been revised upwards (Office of Management and Budget 1999). Many people share the CEA’s optimistic views. For instance, in his New Year message (Financial Times December 29, 1998) Alan Blinder compared the United States’s economy to one of its mighty rivers — it would ‘just keep rolling along’; and President Bill Clinton concluded his Economic Report of the President with the words ‘There are no limits to the world we can create, together, in the century to come.’ This paper takes issue with these optimistic views, although it recognizes that the US economy may well enjoy another good year or two.