Talk to everyone you know and find out how many are investing in new businesses, new technologies, new equipment. Not many. Those who are investing are mostly in fields that are being revolutionized as part of sectoral technological change. Amazon.com does well, a start-up in traffic data, Inrix, does well.
Other people are making money bottom fishing in the old economy; for example, businesses buying up home foreclosures and distressed office buildings.
But try to find a new retail outlet. Drive down Main Street and notice the increasing number of boarded up shops and the office buildings at 4 p.m. whose lights are not burning.
You can blame the high spending, the penchant for demonizing businessmen, increasing regulations and plans for higher taxes. All that is true.
Then add the declining value of the dollar. Some folks in charge seem to think that effective devaluation in the effectively limitless path to recovery. They are wrong, says Steve Forbes, David Malpass at the Wall Street Journal, and our own George Gilder.
Fresh from Telecosm 2009 and on his way to speak at Restoration Weekend, the author of The Israel Test says that when he looks at Israel, he is cheered, but when he looks at Washington, a feeling of gloom pervades.
