Why An Economy for All?

Conservatives call it the “greatest story never told,” an economy in which jobs are up, profits are up, stock prices are healthy, productivity is increasing, and inflation is low. In reality, today’s economy is more reminiscent of the Gilded Age. A few people at the top are profiting handsomely, but the myth of a booming economy does not reflect the everyday experience of working class Americans. In fact, most Americans think we are either in or near a recession.

A majority of Americans struggle with stagnant wages and rising costs of living. They see good jobs getting shipped abroad while companies use global competition as a bludgeon to exact cuts in health care, pensions and other benefits for the jobs that are here. For the first time, parents worry that their children won’t be better off than the generation before them. As the housing bubble bursts and millions of Americans face foreclosure on their homes, Americans’ economic situation is only going to get worse.

Our Unsustainable Economy

The state of the national economy mirrors the experiences of working Americans. We’re running record trade deficits and unprecedented foreign debts. Our economy is increasingly dependent on the kindness of strangers, with China and others mercantilist nations lending us the money to buy the goods that they make in the factories our multinationals have built over there.

This cannot be sustained. We’re borrowing or selling off assets at the rate of more than $2 billion a day. But we refuse to use this borrowed money to invest in areas vital to our future prosperity. Falling bridges, collapsing dams, outmoded broadband, slow trains and dangerously crowded airports – the failure to invest adequate in basic infrastructure is becoming a clear and present danger. The education fundamentals — preschool, small classes in early grades, after-school programs, skilled teachers and affordable college—remain vastly underfunded. While other countries pour more and more resources into educating their children, we continue to cut funding for education.

Of course, this economy works very well for the few: CEOs whose salaries have soared from 40 times that of an average worker to 400 times; billionaire hedge fund operators who pay a lower tax rate than their secretaries; multinational corporations and banks that have written the rules of the global economy.

Needed: A Reassessment

Our broad economic strategy – by, for and of the multinational corporations and banks moving across the world –has put most working families in the box they are in. This is a product of policy and power, not the inevitable workings of nature or providence.

We believe we need a far broader reassessment of our global strategy. The global economy that has evolved in the past few decades is now firmly entrenched. Trade is an ever-growing percentage of our economy — much of it intra-corporate exchanges within global conglomerates that have created worldwide networks of production and distribution. Given technology advancements, the realities of global trade and improved international communication, we must reform our economic policies to address the increasingly interconnected and interdependent world economy.