This is CBSI on the world.

I'm John Batchelor.

The Great Stagnation.

That's the theme, and I welcome John Cochran of the Hoover Institution, writing The Grumpy Economist, I highly recommend,

because what we're looking at here is something that is immediately upon us and can

be dealt with if you understand how we got in this problem of not growing, of not creating

the conditions for more and more prosperity, the great stagnation.

Professor, a very good evening to you.

1970, a dear date to me because I graduated college.

Did I know that I was graduating at the end of innovation and growth?

What happened, John?

Why did we suddenly pull back after the successes of the early part of the 20th century, especially

following the war? Yeah, the U.S. economy grew like gangbusters, very innovative through the

early 1970s. Then there was the great slowdown, malaise and all that, picked up a little bit

in the 80s and 90s, but nothing like it had been.

And then around 2000, our growth really slowed down.

We had been 4% a year.

Now good growth is 2% a year.

And of course, the U.S. is doing better than anywhere else.

Europe basically stopped growing at all about 10 years ago.

So we could be doing a lot better that there is in the news.

Oh, yeah, GDP is up, but we're still

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