his can easily be found in The Wall Street Journal and other financial magazines. The best figures to track are quarterly figures issued by the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics, because the growth rate of productivity differs widely during various stages of the business cycle. There is no blueprint for solving all the problems associated with slow growth. Nevertheless, the major issues that we must deal with forthrightly, are the unprecedented retirement and health costs associated with our aging population and the costs of a deteriorating environment. These issues will consistently require more of our future income. Meanwhile with slow economic growth, it will cost taxpayers more to keep up with the pace that we have now. We will also probably have to invest a greater proportion of our income, and to do so more deliberately than in the past. We will also have to increase our spending on education to keep pace with the rapid growth in technology. The future will almost surely require a more educated work force which means more money spent for education. We cannot turn our concerns to politicians alone. We as a nation must stand together to solve the problems of our future. This can be accomplished with industry and workers teaming together to create ideas to help with increasing the growth.We as a nation have our work cut out for us. Slow economic growth may increasingly set old pensioners against young workers, homeowners against renters, suburbs against cities and those with power, by virtue of their own wealth against those who have none. We have already seen much of this reality in the angry arguments over welfare, Social Security, and other topics such as health care. Our main rival, however, is not the rest of the world, it is the memory of our exceptional past, when our economic advantages made us the most productive country in every major industry and our incomes grew accordingly. Once our mindset changes, th...
