itted from more discussion of the causes of the slowdown. For example, it is not a coincidence that the slowdown began in the early 1970s, after the toll of expenditures on the Vietnam War had begun to register. Rather than giving this and other policies at least an adequate analysis, Madrick engages in what seems to be somewhat circular reasoning:
The economic expansion of the first half of the 1990s has made it even more difficult for Americans to judge how weak our economy has been over the past two decades compared with the rest of our industrial history. The main reasons for this decline . . . are themselves largely the consequences of a more persistent problem: a sharp slowdown in economic growth (3-4).
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