US Economy in High Gear, Says Brit

With the GDP number this quarter expected to hit 5 percent the US remains the engine of the world economy. But don’t tell the MSM.

Just think, writes Gerard Baker of the London Times, if you extend that 5 percent for a year, that adds up to $600 billion added to the economy,

roughly the equivalent of adding one whole new Brazil or Australia to global economic activity every year, just from the incremental extra sweat and heave and click of 300 million Americans.

Or, if you like, think of it this way. Right now the US economy is about 30 percent bigger than Europe’s. In 15 years it will be twice as big.

Baker’s only worry is that rising inequality might cause the US to turn away from the global economy. Actually, he is probably wrong about that.

Inequality is probably only a problem when the economy turns south. It is then, as liberals like to say, that the voters turn to a man on a white horse. Sometimes that man is like Ronald Reagan and ushers in a quarter century of prosperity, with SUVs, McMansions, and starter castles. Sometimes that man is a Franklin Delano Roosevelt and bumbles along for ten years getting nowhere but creating lots of New Deal federal agencies and jobs for liberals. And sometimes that man is an Adolf Hitler and leads his people off a cliff.