The last two decades have been anything but normal for the U.S. economy. America has suffered two catastrophic recessions, income inequality has grown while wage productivity growth has slowed, and U.S. manufacturing has been hollowed out.
As Rob Atkinson writes in the New York Journal of Books, a host of books have sought to make sense of all of this. And many seek a “unified field theory” with a simple explanation to explain what has gone wrong. These explanations include economic monopoly, Wall Street capitalism, corporate greed, intrusive big government, Chinese economic predation, globalization, protectionism, technology exhaustion, technology speed-up, political and social conflict, and even racism.
The idea is to offer one overarching, all-encompassing theory that explains all. This may help sell books, but it is usually a poor substitute for needed complex, multi-factor analysis.
Adding to this body of work comes James Bessen’s The New Goliaths.
Read the review.
