Spurring Economic Growth

There is a fear among the middle class. It’s the fear that their best days, their children’s best days, their community’s best days, and the U.S.’s best days may be in the past. The basic bargain that this country has lived by— work hard, play by the rules, get ahead—seems quaint and nostalgic. When this bargain is broken, something feels, and is, profoundly and structurally wrong in our economy.

Our approach to this is to first acknowledge that the prosperity engine in America has stalled. From 1950 to 2000, our yearly economic growth averaged 3.7%. Since 2001, is has been 1.8%. The reason? Because as the private sector and much of the world innovates, Washington has not and is hopelessly locked in the past. As a result, government has failed to do the one task necessary to build broad-based prosperity: figure out how to make the global information age work for average Americans, not against them.

The prosperity engine is stalled, but it can be repaired—not by tinkering, but by bold reforms. In its simplest formulation, we have to grow the pie AND better share the pie. Here’s how we’re looking at it:

• Make it here, sell it there. We need to make sure businesses locate, innovate, expand, and hire here—and that billions of global consumers buy American goods and services.
• Start a skills revolution. We need to ensure that American workers have the ability to work at a desk, solve complex problems, and make decisions.
• Modernize the safety net. Now that we’ve enacted universal health coverage, we must figure out how to afford it while leaving ourselves room in the budget for critical investments in our future.

Economics can seem cold, but restarting this engine should be our great moral calling—not just because it will raise wages, provide opportunity for the middle and working classes, and allow average people to get ahead—but because it makes us more generous, tolerant, and open-hearted as a nation.