Unlesssomething goes unexpectedly wrong in 2014, the level of real per capita GDP inthe United States will match and exceed its 2007 level. That is not good news.

To see why, consider that, during the twobusiness cycles that preceded the 2007 downturn, the US economy’s real per capita GDP grewat a 2% average annual pace; indeed, for a century or so, the US economy’s realper capitaGDP grew at that rate. So US output is now seven years – 14% – below the levelthat was reasonably expected back in 2007. And there is nothing on the horizonthat would return the US economy to – or even near – its growth path before the2008 financial crisis erupted. The only consolation – and it is a bleakconsolation indeed – is that Europe and Japan are doing considerably worserelative to the 2007 benchmark.

The US economy’s annual per capitaunderperformance in 2014 will thus amount to $9,000. That means $9,000 perperson per year in consumer durables not purchased, vacations not taken,investments not made, and so forth. By the end of 2014, the cumulative per capita wastefrom the crisis and its aftermath will total roughly $60,000.

If we project that forward – with nothing visibleto restore the US to its pre-2008 growth path – at the annual real discountrate of 6% that we apply to equity earnings, the future costs are $150,000 per capita. If weuse the 1.6% annual real discount rate at which the US Treasury can borrow via30-year inflation-protected Treasuries, the future per capita costs are $550,000. And ifwe combine the costs of idle workers and capital during the downturn and theharm done to the US economy’s future growth path, the losses reach 3.5-10 yearsof total output.

That is a higher share of America’s productivecapabilities than the Great Depression subtracted – and the US economy is 16times larger than it was in 1928 (5.5 times larger in per capita terms).So, unless something – and it will need to be something major – returns the USto its pre-2008 growth trajectory, future economic historians will not regardthe Great Depression as the worst business-cycle disaster of the industrialage. It is we who are living in their worst case.

One would think that such a macroeconomicdisaster – one that robs the average American family of four of $36,000 peryear in useful goods and services, and that threatens to keep Americans poorerthan they might have been for decades, if not longer – would focuspolicymakers’ minds. One would think that America’s leaders would be clamberingto formulate policies aimed at returning the economy to its pre-2008 growthpath: putting people back to work, cleaning up underwater mortgages, restoringfinancial markets’ risk-bearing capacity, and boosting investment.

But no. Part of the reason is that, at the top,there is no crisis. According to the best estimates, the income share of America’s top 10%probably crossed 50% in 2012 for the first time ever, and the 22% income sharethat went to the top 1% was exceeded only in 2007, 2006, and 1928. The incomesof America’s top 10% are two-thirds higher than those of their counterparts 20years ago, while the incomes of the top 1% have more than doubled.

Those who fall into the top strata thus regardthemselves as doing well in the current US economy. And indeed they are. Onlythose who spend more time talking to competent macroeconomists than is healthyknow that they could be doing even better if the economy were rebalanced atfull employment. So the absence of distress among America’s top 10% and its top1% – and hence political pressure for measures to return the economy to itspre-2008 growth path – is understandable.

But, for everyone else – roughly 90% of the USpopulation – there has been no jump in income share relative to ten or 20 yearsago to offset what now looks to be a permanent lost decade. On the contrary,the bottom 90% has continued to lose ground.

When income inequality began to rise in the1980’s and 1990’s, those of us who cut our teeth on the long march of NorthAtlantic history expected to see a political reaction. Democratic politics, wethought, would check the rising power of a largely parasitic economicover-class, especially if its influence caused governments to fail to live upto their commitments to provide full employment with increasing – andincreasingly shared – prosperity.

After all, in early-nineteenth-century Britain,growing inequality caused by the Industrial Revolution gave rise to movementsfor government regulation in the interests of the middle and working classes,and for a rebalancing of real incomes away from rich landlords. Similarly, theGreat Depression produced enormous political pressure for reform and change(often for destructive and dangerous change, to be sure, but pressurenonetheless).

Why can’t America launch similar movementstoday? To the extent that this has become a valid question, most Americansshould be as worried today about the quality of their democracy as they areabout the inequality of their incomes.