President Bill Clinton's National Economic Adviser addresses the main issues that were at the center of debate in Bush's second term: Social security reform, outsourcing, and deficit reduction. After two consecutive elections in which Democratic candidates failed to turn clear economic advantages into electoral victory, a debate is raging over what the Democrats should do now. The narrow, red state-blue state argument between chest-beating populists and soulless centrists offers the answer to neither the country's economic future nor the political future of the Democrats. In The Pro-Growth Progressive,President Clinton's longest-serving national economic advisor, Gene Sperling, argues that the best economic strategy for our nation—and the best strategy for progressives whether they be Democrat, Republican, or Independent—is to pursue policies that are both progressive and pro-growth, that promote progressive values of upward mobility, fair starts, and economic dignity as well as embrace markets and innovation. Sperling describes how both parties offer the American public impoverished choices: Democrats in the-sky-is-falling party too often pretend that the way to promote progressive values and expand the American middle class is to slow the pace of the global economy, stop all outsourcing, and intervene in the market. Republicans of the don't-worry-be-happy party hold fast to the bankrupt vision that the best thing for economic growth is the smallest government possible, and have made the conservative deficit hawks of the 1990s an endangered species. But The Pro-Growth Progressive is neither an all-out assault on the Bush agenda nor a partisan call for Democrats to move further left. Both conservatives and progressives have to accept hard truths about the limitations of their approaches. Drawing on his years of policy experience, Sperling lays out a third way on the issues that are dominating the news and Bush's second term: social security, ownership, globalization, and deficit reduction. He explains the policy alternatives that respect the power of free markets while giving government a role in ensuring that the markets benefit all working families. Focused and timely, The Pro-Growth Progressive offers a realistic vision of free enterprise and economic growth in which government can improve education, reduce poverty, and restore the country to fiscal sanity.
The pivotal and troubling role of progressive-era economics in the shaping of modern American liberalism In Illiberal Reformers, Thomas Leonard reexamines the economic progressives whose ideas and reform agenda underwrote the Progressive Era dismantling of laissez-faire and the creation of the regulatory welfare state, which, they believed, would humanize and rationalize industrial capitalism. But not for all. Academic social scientists such as Richard T. Ely, John R. Commons, and Edward A. Ross, together with their reform allies in social work, charity, journalism, and law, played a pivotal role in establishing minimum-wage and maximum-hours laws, workmen's compensation, antitrust regulation, and other hallmarks of the regulatory welfare state. But even as they offered uplift to some, economic progressives advocated exclusion for others, and did both in the name of progress. Leonard meticulously reconstructs the influence of Darwinism, racial science, and eugenics on scholars and activists of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, revealing a reform community deeply ambivalent about America's poor. Illiberal Reformers shows that the intellectual champions of the regulatory welfare state proposed using it not to help those they portrayed as hereditary inferiors but to exclude them.
“Timely and important . . . It should be our North Star for the recovery and beyond.” —Hillary Clinton “Sperling makes a forceful case that only by speaking to matters of the spirit can liberals root their belief in economic justice in people’s deepest aspirations—in their sense of purpose and self-worth.” —The New York Times When Gene Sperling was in charge of coordinating economic policy in the Obama White House, he found himself surprised when serious people in Washington told him that the Obama focus on health care was a distraction because it was “not focused on the economy.” How, he asked, was the fear felt by millions of Americans of being one serious illness away from financial ruin not considered an economic issue? Too often, Sperling found that we measured economic success by metrics like GDP instead of whether the economy was succeeding in lifting up the sense of meaning, purpose, fulfillment, and security of people. In Economic Dignity, Sperling frames the way forward in a time of wrenching change and offers a vision of an economy whose guiding light is the promotion of dignity for all Americans.
A Financial Times Best Economics Book of the Year A Foreign Affairs Best Book of the Year A Fareed Zakaria GPS Book of the Week “A highly intelligent, fact-based defense of the virtues of an open, competitive economy and society.” —Fareed Zakaria “A vitally important corrective to the current populist moment...Open points the way to a kinder, gentler version of globalization that ensures that the gains are shared by all.” —Justin Wolfers “Clausing’s important book lays out the economics of globalization and, more important, shows how globalization can be made to work for the vast majority of Americans. I hope the next President of the United States takes its lessons on board.” —Lawrence H. Summers, former Secretary of the Treasury “Makes a strong case in favor of foreign trade in goods and services, the cross-border movement of capital, and immigration. This valuable book amounts to a primer on globalization.” —Richard N. Cooper, Foreign Affairs Critics on the Left have long attacked open markets and free trade agreements for exploiting the poor and undermining labor, while those on the Right complain that they unjustly penalize workers back home. Kimberly Clausing takes on old and new skeptics in her compelling case that open economies are actually a force for good. Turning to the data to separate substance from spin, she shows how international trade makes countries richer, raises living standards, benefits consumers, and brings nations together. At a time when borders are closing and the safety of global supply chains is being thrown into question, she outlines a clear agenda to manage globalization more effectively, presenting strategies to equip workers for a modern economy and establish a better partnership between labor and the business community.
This collection of essays presents a stimulating and challenging examination of the nature of institutional adjustment, its history and its future, its problems and its purposes. The focus is on the pioneer work done by the late Clarence Ayres, of the University of Texas, in the study of the processes of change and growth and the nature of modern industrialized economies. The opening essay, a provocative discussion of “The Theory of Institutional Adjustment,” is Ayres’s contribution. The succeeding essays examine several aspects of institutional adjustment: Kenneth H. Parsons discusses “The Institutional Basis of a Progressive Approach to Economic Development.” Wendell Gordon considers “Orthodox Economics and Institutionalized Behavior.” Gunnar Myrdal brings the breadth of his knowledge of many different economies and the institutional contexts within which they operate to a study of the “Adjustment of Economic Institutions in Contemporary America.” Forest Hill provides a historical survey of the process of growth and change in his essay “The Government and Institutional Adjustment: The American Experience.” Wolfgang Friedmann discusses some legal aspects of the subject in “Creative Legal Interpretation and the Process of Institutional Adjustment.” Rounding out this collection of essays, Morris A. Copeland and Gardiner C. Means offer proposals for guiding adjustment and change in specific areas: “Implementing the Objective of Full Employment in Our Free Enterprise System” and “Monetary Institutions to Serve the Modern Economy.” These essays were originally read at a conference sponsored by the Department of Economics of the University of Texas at Austin in April and May of 1965.
“Urgent work, by the foremost champion of ‘progressive capitalism.’ ” —The New Yorker An authoritative account of the dangers of unfettered markets and monied politics, People, Power, and Profits shows us an America in crisis. The American people, however, are far from powerless, and Joseph Stiglitz provides an alternative path forward through his vision of progressive capitalism, with a comprehensive set of political and economic changes.
Despite the unprecedented gravity of the challenges posed by global warming, most political systems have not given them the required priority. The oil industry has resisted, and many countries have taken only token measures to reduce emissions and mitigate the worst effects. In this context, this book examines the progressive options available to today’s developing countries as they face the limitations of neoliberalism and the existential challenge of global warming. Examining the cases of both low-income fossil fuel-dependent economies and large middle-income economies, this book argues that for all developing economies the best way forward includes ‘green’ macroeconomic policies articulated with progressive industrial and social policies, thus allowing these countries to achieve economic diversification, build alternative drivers of growth, and deliver improvements in the distribution of income, wealth and power. There is urgent need for this progressive policy agenda - grounded on heterodox economics, committed to social integration and the reduction of multiple inequalities - to improve the economic outcomes for these countries, improve the lives of citizens and meet global climate targets. The book argues that capitalism challenges the possibility of free and dignified existence while climate change challenges the possibility of life itself, and that these challenges must be confronted together. Since neoliberal capitalism will not adopt the necessary policies to reduce carbon emissions rapidly, it must be overthrown – not only for ethical or logical reasons, or to shift to better arrangements for the functioning of society, but in order to preserve the conditions for life itself. This agenda for progressive economic development is essential reading for anyone interested in heterodox economics, development studies, international politics, international relations and sustainable business.
Chapter 20. How the Progressives Became the Tea Party's Mortal Enemy: Networks, Movements, and the Political Currency of Ideas -- Chapter 21. What Is to Be Done? A New Progressivism for a New Century -- List of Contributors -- Index -- A -- B -- C -- D -- E -- F -- G -- H -- I -- J -- K -- L -- M -- N -- O -- P -- R -- S -- T -- U -- V -- W -- Y -- Z
The book presents the conservative and liberal arguments related to the current economic issues faced by the Obama administration, including market regulation and green economy.