America's Lost Decade(s)

Is America headed for a lost decade? And is that why I relentlessly propose that the days of industrial age business as usual are numbered? Yes — and no. In this short video post, here's what I advance: America just had a lost decade (I've also compiled four troubling charts, available here, that lend credence to my conjecture).

In many ways, what we're experiencing is less a great recession that started in 2008, and more a Great Stagnation, that began a decade or more before that. The real crisis isn't about bankers, bonuses, and bailouts — it's about an economy that's geared to create thin value; value that's artificial, meaningless, and often, actually worth little, in human terms. So the real challenge isn't about eking out another penny of profit by laying off more another hundred people, offshoring with an even greater ferocity, crushing your fiercest rival more savagely, or churning out more lowest-common-denominator "product." It's about learning to create thicker value: authentic value, that endures, resonates, and multiplies. Unless, of course, you think you can survive another lost decade.