Real gross domestic product per American rose less between 2007 and 2019 than it did between 1929 and 1941. The Great Depression is typically viewed as having been more severe because the initial downturn was sharper, but the stagnation in living standards following the financial crisis was roughly as bad.
The past has become more valuable than the future to many Americans; they cling desperately to the power to enforce stasis, preserving a facade of the country they grew up in at the expense of the very dynamism that made that country great.
