(1) The surge in regulations at all levels of government beginning in the 1970 inexorably ground down small business creation and productivity growth towards zero. The Obama tidal wave drove small business creation below failure for the first time in American history and all but eliminated productivity growth.



(2) Until very recently, employment growth was substantially below population growth and lower than during any post-WWII recovery. For example, during the Reagan recovery, the economy created up to a million jobs a month with a substantially smaller base population. During the Obama years, 150,000 was considered a great monthly jobs number.



(3) The official U3 unemployment rate detached from reality some years ago because it only counts those looking for work, not the millions of under and unemployed the Obama administration moved onto the disability dole or who are simply living off their families or on the street. The better measure is the labor participation rate (the percentage of Americans with some sort of work), which fell relentlessly during the Obama administration until bottoming out in 2015 and only recently recovered somewhat under Trump.



(4) The reasons for the growth in inequality are two fold: (a) The Fed created fiat money (currency growth in excess of economic growth) by the trillions of dollars, which has migrated into the equity markets creating a massive inflation of stock prices, instead of into the stagnant economy creating a more general inflation. This enriches the investor class. (b) In contrast, the government destruction of productivity growth has killed off wealth creation for most everyone else who is not using the government to rent seek.



(5) While Trump's cessation of the Obama regulatory tidal wave and modest tax reform returned us to a semblance of normal recovery level growth, the government leviathan remains. Recovery of past prosperity will require a fundamental re-limitation of government. Unfortunately, our bi-partisan progressive political class is intent on moving in the opposite direction. The Democrats are running as open socialists unabashedly discussing the government takeover of most of the economy. The GOP establishment is only desires to slow down the progress down the road to serfdom and shows no appetite for honoring their campaign promises to reverse past government expansions of power.



Folks, we are inexorably following the road to Greece and Democrats want to get us there shortly after 2020.