the US's Real GDP was averaging well below 1.5% growth
Even if we rely on your own (or your preferred source's) figures and calculations, that's still positive growth. Underwhelming, underperforming etc. but not a lost decade.
And the beginning of the decades was the end of a comedown from another bubble, combined with 9/11. Then the tax cuts didn't come in to full effect for another year or three. Measure from 2003 until the present and you see
2003 2.45 %
2004 3.10 %
2005 4.40 %
2006 3.20 %
2007 3.20 %
2008 2.20 %
indexmundi.com
The average growth would be 3.09%.
As for "Absent the (inevitably temporary) mortgage equity withdrawals from the RE bubble"
If a gain is temporary, and you subtract it out from the year it occurs, but don't add it back in the year when the end of the temporary gain actually impacts the GDP statistics then your double counting the negative.
If in year 1 GDP is 100, and in year 2 its 110, but the 10 was just a temporary factor, and in year 3 it goes back to 100, you will have had zero growth over the period. With a growth of 10%, then a loss of a bit less than 10% (9.09%) from a larger base, to get back to the original 100.
But if you subtract out the temporary factor of 10 factor than the growth from year one to two becomes zero, and instead of growth of 10%, then -9.09%, resulting in a net zero growth, you get growth of 0%, followed by -9.09%, making it look like there has been negative growth overall when that wasn't really the case. |
