Savvy geopolitical commentator David P. Goldman has a new piece out at First Things that reflects on the state of the U.S. economy and its implications for the deep splits in the electorate, which have divided the Republican party and the conservative movement, too. Goldman’s column was written in response to a piece by First Things editor Rusty Reno, who described Texas Sen. Ted Cruz’s GOP convention speech as an instance of “rotting flesh Reaganism” — that is, a walking, zombie version of a politics that was once viable and important, hinged on freeing Americans from the deadening grip of government.

Cruz’s speech stressed over and over again the ideal of American independence, self-reliance, and resistance to bureaucratic micromanagement. Reno dismissed these themes as overripe to the point of rottenness, claiming that what Americans seek instead is solidarity, a sense of belonging, national community, and togetherness, which they increasingly lack as our families splinter and economy seems to stagnate. It is these themes, Reno argues, that fueled the rise of Donald Trump.

Goldman responds to one specific assertion Reno makes — that the U.S. economy is not, as it was when Ronald Reagan ran for office, “suffering under suffocating collectivism and clotted, complacent capitalism.” Goldman looks at the facts and sees an America facing many of the same challenges it did in the creaky, vaguely decrepit 1970s. He points out that entrepreneurship is no longer a byword for how Americans think about business success — and for good reason, since “startup businesses contributed virtually zero new jobs during the post-2009 employment recovery.” Virtually all the new jobs in that period emerged from the country’s largest Standard & Poors 1,500 companies.

By contrast, between 1980 and 2010 startup companies had “created 2.9 million jobs a year while established firms lost 1.5 million jobs a year.” What is worse, starting in 2008, “business formation dipped below the business closure rate.” Furthermore, “productivity growth during the past five years has fallen to the lowest level since the Bureau of Labor Statistics began keeping the numbers.”

Goldman worries that we may have outlived the long-standing model of America as an economy of “creative destruction,” where newcomers like Apple arose to disrupt the business of IBM and FedEx challenged the Post Office, harnessing new technologies and creating whole new industries. Instead, we may be sliding into the track of many European nations, which accept low growth as a fact of life, where politics is a squabble over which faction will hold the bureaucratic knife that slices up a stagnant or shrinking pie.

Some numbers bear that fear out. Goldman notes that “close to half of the increase in corporate profits during the past decade can be attributed to regulatory rent-seeking by large corporations.” No wonder, for Goldman, we see the rise of socialist and protectionist politicians:

Before the Great Recession, ordinary people could start businesses and get rich. Everyone knew someone who had gotten rich. With the disappearance of business startups, social mobility has declined. The voters conclude that the lottery is rigged, because they don’t see any winners.

If the economy leads our politics down that one-way, no-win track, the laws and policies made will only reinforce and lock in decline, Goldman warns. Instead of abandoning “freedom talk,” he recommends that defenders of the market economy become more precise and fact-based in their approach to freeing America’s productive forces. He points to the need to cut expanding regulations — the fruit of political zero-sum fights for slices of pie, noting: “The Congressional Budget Office estimated that Obamacare alone will prevent the creation of 2.3 million new jobs by 2021.”

Goldman also recommends “aggressive” funding of basic scientific research, of the sort that makes possible new technological breakthroughs with incalculable potential. To make this possible, we need cuts not in the income tax, but in the corporate and capital gains tax rates. Such policies aren’t “sexy,” but they’re the best alternative to accepting national shrinkage and the increasingly bitter and ugly squabbles that mark any country in slow decline.