For the many, by contrast, there has been only secular stagnation, with depressed employment and stagnating wages.
Economically, tight state controls have fostered stagnation and popular resentment while hindering foreign investment.
They know that if the negotiations fail, further sanctions will kick in, economic stagnation will worsen, and they will reap the benefits of widespread public disenchantment".
After decades of waning organized labor power and wage stagnation, issues of worker rights and discriminatory pay inequity have moved to the forefront of an ongoing national conversation about wealth inequality in America.
But some US experts – including Harvard's Larry Summers, a former US treasury secretary – have warned that America will struggle to achieve a robust, sustainable recovery because the prevalence of insecure, low-wage jobs means that consumer demand will continue to be weak: a theory known as "secular stagnation".
He might like to set out an optimistic, open philosophy, but riots, cuts and economic stagnation do not encourage people to listen.
Proponents of secular stagnation argue that government spending as a share of GDP, which has more than doubled in most advanced economies since the 1950s, should continue to rise.
In 2010, with the Euro-crisis deepening, stagnation entrenched and unemployment still to peak, David Cameron boasted that Britain was "out of the danger zone".
Related: Average UK household to be £10,000 in debt by end of 2016 Increases in the cost of living together with wage stagnation have hit families where there is only one adult who is likely to be in part-time work to fit in with childcare.
The budget's sound and fury signifies, macro-economically, nothing but sustained stagnation.
Fewer are confident about how to reverse the four-decade-long stagnation in middle America's pay, and in the particular case of Mrs Clinton, there are few hints even as to how far – or not – she is ready to rethink the free-market thrust of her husband's third way.
