By Kerby Anderson

In the first quarter this year, the nation’s gross domestic product grew by just one-half of a percent. Let me say to people who are younger and have grown up with this slow growth that this is terrible. From 1950 to 2000, the U.S. economy grew at an annual rate of 3.5 percent. In fact, President Obama may be the only president in modern times to have presided over an economy that never even reached 3 percent growth.

Is there anything Congress and the next president can do to end America’s slow growth tailspin? John Cochrane at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution has written a column with that name. He says there are three camps of economists who try to explain why growth is slowing down.

One camp says we’re run out of ideas. “We were supposed to have flying cars and all we got was Twitter.” The second camp argues this slow growth is due to such factors as “secular stagnation” or a “saving glut.” The third camp (which is his view) is that the U.S. economy is simply overrun by an out-of-control and increasingly politicized regulatory state. “If it takes years to get the permits to start projects and mountains of paper to hire people, if every step risks a new criminal investigation, people don’t invest, hire or innovate.”

If you compare America to a middle-aged overweight person, you get different solutions. The first camp says that’s just the way it is, so get used to it. The second camp looks for a miracle diet. The third camp says get back to basics: eat right and exercise.

We may not like to hear that the best option is to get back to basics because that may seem painful. But that’s what it will take if we want to get out of the slow growth doldrums. If we are to stimulate economic growth in America we need to make it possible for people to invest and innovate.