The Slow Economic Recovery Has a Surprising Culprit. A decline in economic freedom since 2000 is the main cause of disappointing GDP growth.

Barron's reports:

The economic expansion that began in the third quarter of 2009 logged six years as of second-quarter 2015. That’s exactly the same duration as the previous expansion, which began in first-quarter 2002 and ended in fourth-quarter 2007, just before the start of the Great Recession.

On Thursday, the Bureau of Economic Analysis will release its first estimate of how economic growth fared in the second quarter, the 24th of the expansion. I’m expecting an annual growth rate of 3% or better, an above-average performance compared with the previous 23 quarters.

The BEA will also be releasing its annual benchmark revisions of past data. But even if there are upward revisions to recent years, and even assuming I’m right about improved performance in the second quarter, chances are still remote that the overall patterns will change materially.

For the recent period, those patterns look dismal. There were five expansions from 1970 to 2000, through which growth averaged in a range from 3.6% to 5.1%. Of the two expansions since 2000, the current expansion has been the slowest of all, at 2.2% so far. The second-slowest was the previous expansion, at 2.8%.

In the future, it's possible that Common Core math will tell students in government schools that 3% growth is bad for the environment.