What's Really Dragging Down the U.S. Economy

The Post had an interesting idea that went badly awry. It thought to tell its readers what parts of the economy are lagging by comparing the share of GDP in the most recent quarter to the average over the period from 1985 to 2005. While the choice of years is somewhat problematic (in the years 1996-2000 the economy was being supported by an unsustainable stock bubble and in the years 2002-2005 by an unsustainable housing bubble), the bigger problems stem from a failure of arithmetic and also...