1. The Recent Growth Record of the American Economy.
- Author
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Peterson, Wallace C.
- Subjects
ECONOMIC development ,PER capita ,GROWTH rate ,CONSUMPTION (Economics) ,ECONOMIC policy ,ECONOMIC activity - Abstract
This article focuses on the adequacy of the growth record of the American economy in recent years. Within the past several years the question of whether or not the economy is advancing at a rapid enough pace has become a matter of serious interest to the general public as well as the economic specialist. This is true to such an extent that the economy's allegedly inadequate growth rate became one of the major issues in the 1960 presidential election campaign. The question of the adequacy of the growth performance of the American economy has been brought forcefully to public attention from a number of responsible and professionally competent sources. The central question in any discussion of the adequacy of the growth record of the economy is that of criteria. Evidence based upon per capita data rather than growth rates suggests that the economy's performance from 1944 through 1960 was relatively unsatisfactory. Real gains of sizable proportions were recorded in living standards as reflected in per capita consumption outlays, but the primary source of such gains was not the sustained growth iii the economy as a whole, but a large-scale shift in the end-use of the nation's total output. As the 1950's drew to a close, however, the possibilities of further progress in living standards from this particular source were becoming exhausted. The same holds for any future increases in the other major components of the output total, particularly investment outlays. In retrospect, therefore, the era 1945-1960 was primarily one in which the fruits of the economy's massive ware tune surge of growth were adapted to peacetime uses. It was not, an era of satisfactory growth.
- Published
- 1964
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