We should be horrified at 1.7 percent GDP growth

From the Washington Post: 

...we’ve now faced nine months of an expansion at a bit less than a 1 percent annual rate. Every two steps forward for growth seems to be accompanied by a step and a half back.

It would be one thing if that kind of slow growth was happening in a time of full employment, when the economy was basically sound. But with 7.6 percent unemployment, the nation could really use a few quarters in a row of 4, 5 or 6 percent growth to get us back to where people can really be pleased with the economy. It’s not an outlandish view; that’s exactly what happened in the early 1980s, in the aftermath of the last very deep recession....

Those of us who pore over government economic statistics have on some level become so accustomed to mediocrity in the U.S. recovery ... that we grade these economic reports on a curve.

... 1.7 percent growth isn’t good in the environment we’re in, even if it is a little better than economists thought the number would be. It isn’t even mediocre. It’s terrible. It’s a sign of the diminished economic expectations that economy-watchers have set for themselves that it’s anything to crow about at all.
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Link: http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/07/31/we-should-be-horrified-at-1-7-percent-gdp-growth/