America in the Age of Trump by Douglas E. Schoen

Author:Douglas E. Schoen
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781594039485
Publisher: Encounter Books
Published: 2017-05-30T04:00:00+00:00

CHANGING THE GAME

We’ve seen some legitimate economic improvements since the end of the Great Recession. But we still have a long way to go. We have a severe income inequality crisis and a critical one of mobility. Our nation has broadly lost faith in the American dream. The majority of new jobs don’t pay enough. The middle class is hollowing out, the wealth gap has widened during the recovery, and majorities don’t benefit from an improved economy. A feeling of hopelessness has submerged the American spirit.

The solutions that we’ve put forward are firm departures from the pervasive notion that redistribution is the key to recovery. The way out is economic growth, pure and simple. “Solving almost all of America’s problems hinges on re-establishing robust economic growth,” writes John H. Cochrane of the Hoover Institution. “Over the next 50 years, if income could be doubled relative to 2% growth, the U.S. would be able to pay for Social Security, Medicare, defense, environmental concerns and the debt. Halve that income gain, and none of those spending challenges can be addressed. Doubling income per capita would help the less well off far more than any imaginable transfer scheme.”83

To foster that growth, we need sound policies that depart from the zero-sum game of winners-and-losers politics and that help everyone get ahead—individuals, families, businesses. Washington has a key role to play here, sometimes with big new initiatives—like investments in our infrastructure and energy exploration. More often, though, Washington can best contribute by undoing the effects of wrongheaded policies that have tamped down opportunity and weakened the economy’s momentum.

Beyond strictly economic policies, however, the answer to a broader-ranging American recovery lies in another policy area: education. So much of what needs to be done to decrease inequality and promote mobility starts with education reform. Brookings data show, for instance, that the median income of working men between the ages of 30 and 45 who never graduated high school fell 20 percent over the last two and a half decades.84 In the next chapter, we’ll explore a range of options that might not reform American education but actually remake it—and give millions of Americans a real chance at the kind of economic opportunity and success that we once viewed as our birthright.

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