Nobel prize winner Phelps says U.S. needs 1950s-style productivity boom

The U.S. needs to return to the kind of economic and productivity growth it saw in mid-20th century to boost public spirits, according to a Nobel Prize-winning economist. 

“We badly need to get back to economic growth,” Edmund S. Phelps, director of the Center on Capitalism and Society at Columbia University, told CNBC’s “Squawk Box Europe” on Wednesday. 

“By that I don’t mean an artificial temporary boom or a slower descent into lower employment, I mean that we’ve really got to get productivity growth on an upward climb approaching what it was in the 50s and 60s,” he said. 

Phelps was awarded the 2006 Nobel in Economic Sciences for his work challenging the Phillips Curve, the view,…