The End of Normal: The Great Crisis and the Future of Growth

James K. Galbraith (Get this book)
A renowned economist argues that the days of easy growth and full employment are over. Following the crisis of 2008, economists scrambled to "explain" the financial meltdown, variously blaming the government, banks or income inequality for the most severe setback since the Great Depression. Almost all have offered prescriptions for restoring economic health; almost all presume as normal a growth rate that, but for a blip in the 1970s, has persisted since the end of World War II. Galbraith dissents. We face a far different future, he insists, with the world economy no longer under the financial or military control of the United States and its allies, with energy markets costly and uncertain, new technologies destroying more jobs than they create and the private financial sector no longer supercharging growth. Under these new conditions, preserving post-WWII growth rates is impossible. A cleareyed, if dismaying analysis of the new normal, "a qualitatively different form of capitalism" for the 21st century.--Kirkus