![]() ![]() Is it possible that a cause and effect relationship exists? While government can tax, and borrow, and spend, it is simply churning existing wealth without creating new. And while not as dramatic over the last four decades, when government spending has been greatly increasing, economic growth has been noticeably declining. Despite enormous government intervention in the near-term, we are witnessing dramatically subpar growth. Yet in both cases, the economy has hardly responded in a commensurately positive manner. While this has been obviously true during the current post-crisis period, the longer-term effect, while more gradual, is equally clear. It is quite clear that America’s economy has not only been “stimulated” by extraordinarily high government spending in the crisis and post-crisis period, but has become increasingly affected by high government spending over the longer-term too.Īt the same time government spending has increased as a share of the economy, private sector activity has necessarily declined in proportion. In 2007, prior to the crisis, they were 19.7% and CBO calculates their 40-year average at 21% – all far higher than their 1948 level. CBO estimates that they will equal 22.2% in 2013 – almost doubled. In 1948, federal outlays equaled 11.6% of GDP. However, federal spending has been an entirely different story. All of these are below CBO’s calculated 40-year average of roughly 17.9%. Nor have they been high during the post-crisis period: 15.4% in 2011, 15.1% in 20, and 17.6% in 2008. Under CBO’s estimate, taxes will equal 16.9% of GDP this year. In 1948, federal revenue equaled 16.2% of GDP. Interestingly, taxes as a percentage of GDP do not show the great discrepancy that might be expected. It is therefore natural to look at government actions over the last seven decades. There has been a concerted government effort to compensate for the recent crisis – through tax cuts, “stimulative” spending and historically low interest rates. ![]() Perhaps it is finally time we looked harder to see if the problem runs deeper. Such a dramatic break with the past, begs the question: Why? Does the financial crisis alone account for what we are seeing? For four years, we have sought to convince ourselves it does. What we have seen over the last four years is unlike anything during the last seven decades. America’s economic growth slipped gradually but consistently – from 3.18% to 2.99% – over four decades. To understand America’s economic advantage, consider that of the IMF’s top ten 2012 national economies, only Brazil (#7) and India (#10) – accounting for just a combined 6.1% of today’s global GDP – were relatively untouched by WWII.Īs shattered economies recovered, and shuttered economies opened, with communism’s fall across much of the world, the global economic gap began to close. had emerged as the world’s lone economic Super Power, with the rest of the world’s major economies either shattered by war or shuttered by communism. That there was heady growth in the two decades following WWII makes sense. With his richly illustrated The Architecture of Aftermath, Smith has done so as well.Even if 2008 (-0.3%) and 2009’s (-3.1%) negative annual GDP percentages are dropped (something undone for the other periods) and only the 2010-13 period is averaged, the result is just 1.95% – still over a full percentage point below the previous decade’s. Like other artists everywhere, architects are responding to the idea of aftermath by questioning the viability of their forms and the validity of their purposes. Indeed, Smith focuses on the very culture of aftermath itself, exploring how global politics, clashing cultures, and symbolic warfare have changed the way we experience destination architecture. With close readings of key buildings-including Jørn Utzon’s Sydney Opera House, Minoru Yamasaki’s World Trade Center, Frank Gehry’s Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, and Richard Meier’s Getty Center-Smith traces the growth of the spectacular architecture of modernity and then charts its aftermath in the conditions of contemporaneity. The September 11 terrorist attacks targeted, in Osama bin Laden’s words, “America’s icons of military and economic power.” In The Architecture of Aftermath, Terry Smith argues that it was no accident that these targets were buildings: architecture has long served as a symbol of proud, defiant power-and never more so than in the late twentieth century.īut after September 11, Smith asserts, late modern architecture suddenly seemed an indulgence. ![]()
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