Faster economic growth is the ‘moon shot’ of this generation

In 1962, President Kennedy gave a speech at Rice University setting out a national goal: going to the moon by end of the 1960s. This choice would “serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone,” Kennedy said.

I like the idea of national goals, if only as a mechanism that highlights and clarifies our greatest national challenges. I think one relevant national goal for America today would be to grow the US economy as fast in the future as it has in the past. Real US GDP has grown by an average of 3.2% annually since the end of World War II, but the economy has expanded by only 1.8% annually since 2000. And forecasters such as the CBO and Fed say we better get used to it. Lower birthrates and an aging population mean the US economy isn’t adding workers like it used to. And even assuming depressed, post-recession productivity growth rebounds, it only gets you to around 2%, tops. (Let’s assume for the moment official productivity stats are more or less correct.)

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So really the goal of faster economic growth is largely one of faster productivity growth joined with greater and broader economic dynamism. Not as soul-stirring as the space program, but certainly critical to the future growth of US living standards and generating the wealth and know-how necessary to creating, I dunno, a “mulitplanetary civilization.”

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Faster economic growth is the ‘moon shot’ of this generation