Current system fails to deliver ‘practical solutions’
Gridlock in the US political system is responsible for the country’s declining economic competiveness, according to a recent report.
The report ‒ Problems Unsolved and A Nation Divided ‒ released by Harvard Business School last week, notes that US GDP has grown by about 2 percent since 2000, compared with an average of 3 percent to 4 percent in the previous half-century.
The majority of the school’s alumni say the US political system is retarding the nation’s economy, with 82 percent of Republican respondents, 74 percent of independents and 56 percent of Democrats in agreement on this point.
For the report, Harvard Business School surveyed 4,807 of its alumni between May 3 and June 6, as well as 1,408 members of the general public, polled between June 10 and 26. The poll of the general US public sees a smaller, but still substantial, percentage blaming the political system for the economy: about half of Republican respondents, 26 percent of Democrats and 38 percent of independents.
The study concludes that the political system ‘is no longer delivering good results for the average American’, adding that there is a failure to compromise and deliver practical solutions to the nation’s problems.
It also notes that the current election is leading to distrust and increasing political polarization. The majority of respondents in each party view members of the other party ‘very unfavorably’, the first time this has happened since data started to be collected in 1992. Almost half (49 percent) of Republicans say they fear the Democratic Party, while 55 percent of Democrats feel afraid of the Republican Party.
US presidential candidates Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump will go head to head for the first time this evening in a heavily anticipated presidential debate.
Clinton thinks corporate America has become obsessed with ‘quarterly capitalism’, with executives over-focused on seeking short-term gains in exchange for longer-term investments that will boost the economy. Clinton thinks companies are too concerned about what their investors and activist shareholders do in the short term and believes the solution is to look at a review of corporate law. Trump, meanwhile, thinks there is too much regulation and wants to see some of it scrapped.
Clinton and Trump are six weeks away from the US presidential election. The first of three presidential debates is expected to challenge the current record of 80 mn viewers for a presidential debate, set in 1980 by the discussion between Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan.
The majority of IR Magazine online readers would prefer to see Clinton as the next US president, according to April’s online poll. Clinton received 40 percent of the vote, Trump 20 percent. The poll, which received 65 votes, was open to readers from across the globe, not just those eligible to vote in the US.
