, Columnist
Government Holds the Promise of Faster Growth
Investing in public goods boosts productivity, the one thing that makes all of us richer.
The bigger it is, the better.
Photographer: Wendy Maeeda/The Boston Globe/Getting ImagesThis article is for subscribers only.
One of the U.S.’s biggest economic challenges is the slump in productivity. After climbing steadily for many decades, productivity has slowed dramatically since 2011:
Productivity is the key to long-term prosperity. It represents a hard ceiling on the amount of valuable things that a society is able to produce. If productivity flatlines, it means that the pie isn’t growing, and there will be less to divide up among us. So finding the cause of the slowdown is a big, important task.