Here’s another chart. This time we have real gross domestic product minus real government consumption expenditures and gross investment. In other words, the part of GDP that NIPA attributes to the private sector.
What you see here is a pretty fair representation of the truth. To say it’s “doing fine” is overly optimistic. The private sector took a huge blow and it hasn’t recovered from that blow. But the private sector has pretty steadily grown in the Obama years, while government purchases and public investment have stagnated or fallen.
