US Economic Myths Bite the Dust

by Mark Weisbrot

The Great Recession is allowing some widely held beliefs about the US economy [1] – which were the source of much evangelism over the last few decades – to run up against a reality check. This is to be expected, since the United States [2] has been the epicentre of the storm of policy blunders that caused the world recession.

This month my CEPR colleagues John Schmitt and Nathan Lane showed that the United States is not the nation of small businesses [3] that it is regularly dressed up to be for electoral campaign speeches and editorials. If we look at what percentage of our overall labour force is self-employed, or what percentage of manufacturing workers or high-tech workers are employed in small businesses – well, the US ranks at or near the bottom among high-income countries.