{"id":23964,"date":"2016-08-16T16:23:59","date_gmt":"2016-08-16T20:23:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/?p=23964"},"modified":"2016-08-16T16:23:59","modified_gmt":"2016-08-16T20:23:59","slug":"ugly-stat-of-the-day-economic-productivity-decline-worst-since-the-1970s","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/23964\/ugly-stat-of-the-day-economic-productivity-decline-worst-since-the-1970s\/","title":{"rendered":"Ugly Stat of the Day:  Economic Productivity Decline Worst Since the 1970s"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>In our recent Liberty Update <a href=\"http:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/index.php\/commentary\/43-taxes-and-economy\/3215-obama-didnt-save-the-economy-he-subdued-it\" target=\"_blank\">commentary<\/a> &#8220;Obama Didn&#8217;t Save the Economy, He Subdued It,&#8221; we noted the depressing fact that the current cyclical economic &#8220;recovery&#8221; under Obama is the worst since accurate recordkeeping began after World War II.<\/p>\n<p>Unfortunately, it gets worse. \u00a0The U.S. Labor Department reports that economic productivity remains in the midst of its <a href=\"http:\/\/www.wsj.com\/articles\/u-s-productivity-dropped-at-0-5-pace-in-the-second-quarter-1470746092\" target=\"_blank\">longest decline since the 1970s<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>It was the third consecutive quarter of falling productivity, the longest streak since 1979. \u00a0Productivity in the second quarter was down 0.4% from a year earlier, the first annual decline in three years. \u00a0That was further down from an already tepid average productivity growth of 1.3% in 2007 through 2015, itself just half the pace seen in 2000 through 2007, and the trend shows little sign of reversing&#8230; \u00a0Productivity is a key ingredient in determining growth in wages, prices and overall economic output.&#8221;<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>And the culprit? \u00a0As <em>The Wall Street Journal<\/em> notes, &#8220;The slowdown in recent quarters has likely been reinforced by weak business investment in new equipment, software and facilities that could help boost worker efficiency.&#8221; \u00a0Of course, that&#8217;s what tends to happen when an administration saddles the economy with record levels of regulation and makes no real advance toward finally reducing the developed world&#8217;s <a href=\"http:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/index.php\/commentary\/43-taxes-and-economy\/1748-were-1-americas-39-corporate-tax-rate-now-developed-worlds-highest\" target=\"_blank\">highest corporate tax rate<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Thanks, Barack!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In our recent Liberty Update commentary &#8220;Obama Didn&#8217;t Save the Economy, He Subdued It,&#8221; we noted the depressing fact that the current cyclical economic &#8220;recovery&#8221; under Obama is the worst since accurate recordkeeping began after World War II. Unfortunately, it gets worse. \u00a0The U.S. Labor Department reports that economic productivity remains in the midst of [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[4902,19,24,4901],"class_list":["post-23964","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-posts","tag-1970s","tag-economy","tag-obama","tag-productivity"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23964","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23964"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23964\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":23966,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23964\/revisions\/23966"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23964"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23964"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23964"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}