Is the world going into a recession? And if so, can the United States avoid being dragged in? The United States is still growing at more than 2 percent, which is not bad, but a reduction from its earlier growth rate after the Trump economic policies were first implemented.

Despite Chinese claims that the world’s second-largest economy is still growing at approximately 6 percent, many outside experts believe it is hardly growing at all. Japan is nearly stagnant at 1 percent growth, and Britain and the Euro-zone economies are not growing much more. Only parts of South Asia are showing much vigor.

The reasons for the slowdown in most countries is not difficult to understand. Too much government spending, coupled with destructive levels of taxation and regulation.

The spending, in part, is being driven by very unfavorable demographics ? in Japan, China and much of Europe, where the populations are already shrinking or soon will be.

The people are living longer and longer, all of which results in fewer and fewer workers being taxed to support an ever-increasing elderly population. The more the workers are taxed to support the growing dependent population, the less likely they are to continue working (at least in the taxable economy).

Greece is the poster child for the future of Europe (as well as Japan and China), where the ability to borrow or tax has reached its limit, resulting in falling real incomes. Greece seems to have stabilized at the moment, but it will have to be very lucky to meet its new fiscal targets ? and if it doesn’t, real incomes will continue to drop.

Artificial intelligence and robots may eventually come to the rescue, but probably not soon enough for most countries.