More recently, hybrid car-makers have had programs to take back and safely dispose of used or damaged high-voltage battery packs for 15 years. Those nickel-metal-hydride cells contain precious metals with a known recycling value.
The term secular stagnation was originally coined by Alvin Hansen in 1938 to describe what he feared was the fate of the American economy following the Great Depression of the early 1930s: a check to economic progress as investment opportunities were stunted by the closing of the frontier and the collapse of immigration.
The term was born out of the prolonged economic slump of the 1970s, when the United States experienced spiking inflation in the face of a shrinking economy, something economists had previously thought to be impossible. The word stagflation is a contraction of stagnant and inflation.. When the economy is stagnant, it means that the gross domestic product (GDP) -- the standard measure of a nation's total economic output -- is either growing at a very slow rate or shrinking.