Google wants a management structure more like Berkshire Hathaway’s. Berkshire Hathaway wants growth more like Google’s. Monsanto and Terex want to be more like Apple and other companies that minimize their tax burdens. And China wants to be more like the U.S., or at least its central bank wants to follow the Yellen brick road of devaluation to prosperity. All are seeking the 2 percent solution.

There is a growing consensus that the new normal is an annual growth rate of around 2 percent. Some Republican candidates say they have plans to double that, but until they answer the key question – “how?” – doubters will outnumber believers by a substantial margin. Yes, the auto, housing and office market sectors are providing a significant uplift to the nevertheless modest recovery. But the coming increase in interest rates will create a new headwind for those industries, there is talk of an office market bubble, and analysts are increasingly worried about the quality of the IOUs consumers are using to pay for their top-of-the-line vehicles. Also, the strengthening dollar and the entry of China into the currency-devaluation race, which will stifle American exports; the massive overhang of billions in student loan debt; Hillary Clinton’s call for higher taxes on “the rich”; the Obama administration’s assault on the coal, oil and gas industries – over 2,600 pages of new regulations that he hopes will put him in the unaccustomed position of leading from the front when 200 countries meet in Paris in December to combat climate change – combine to lend support to those economists who see 2 percent growth in America’s long-term future. Or enough support to have many companies hunting for ways to continue growing in a 2 percent economy in which in the second quarter Standard & Poor’s 500 companies saw what Reuters calls the “worst sales fall in nearly six years” and a first year-on-year quarterly profit decline (-1 percent) since 2012, after first quarter profits for all US companies fell by almost 9%compared with the fourth quarter of 2014.