It pains me to admit it, but Nelson Lebo III hit the nail on the head with this essay published at The Automatic Earth:

Climate, Energy, Economy: Pick Two

I share this on the Wall of Fame today as an example of enlightened writing about growth-related issues. Lebo forces us to come to terms with something people like me are working every day to prevent: collapse.

Yesterday, July 11, was World Population Day, marked by a disappointing dearth of news reports and commentary about the most important population issue of our time: we are in overshoot and need to shrink our numbers.

I want to give Bryce Covert some applause for pointing out what I’ve long believed but never see mentioned: Presidents do not have much power over the economy. In Ask Not What the President Can Do for the Economy, published in the New York Times this month, Covert points out why promises of candidates to grow the economy are pretty much nonsense.

“THIS year’s presidential candidates, like all candidates before them, have talked endlessly about what they’ll do to boost the economy if they make it to the White House.”

You know the drill, as James Carville famously said during Bill Clinton’s campaign for reelection, “it’s the economy, stupid.” It turns out we are a bit stupid to believe the President (or ANY elected official, in my view) really has much power to influence how “robust” our economy is.

Robert Samuelson got it half-right in his syndicated Washington Post column last week:

Let Us Praise GDP

His concern is with the desire of some GDP critics to change the way GDP (gross domestic product) is calculated. Since everlasting growth of GDP is our Holy Grail, I expect every reader knows that GDP is a measure of economic activity, or “throughput.”

There are several good reasons to laud Clifford Cobb, Ted Halstead, Jonathan Rowe and The Atlantic magazine for this piece:

If the GDP Is Up, Why Is America Down?

By most measures the U.S. economy is quite healthy. We seem to have recovered quite nicely from the Great Recession which began in 2008. Unemployment down, the longest period of sustained job growth on record, stock market up. GDP in positive growth territory. Yet in this presidential election year, GOP candidates are promising to fix the “terrible” economy over which current U.S. President (D) Barack Obama presides. Even Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders is promising to right problems with this economy. “…something is profoundly wrong,” he has stated.