Article

Waking Up: America’s Once-in-a-Generation Opportunity for Structural Economic Reform and Political Renewal

Long form article published during the 2016 US presidential race warning about the complacency of the Clinton campaign and proposing a much stronger and more coherent economic policy program. Based on the contents of a memo sent earlier to the campaign.

Outlet: Huffington Post

Topics: ,

Author: Richard Samans

Original article is here.

Excerpt:

The stakes for a new Administration could hardly be higher. A once-in-a-generation realignment of the political landscape appears to be underway[2] driven by mounting frustration that the American Dream of shared, rising prosperity is fading without a credible response from either Party establishment. The next president needs to find a way to cut through this stasis and rally the country behind a long overdue series of domestic reforms whose combined effect would be to rebalance our economy’s growth model to generate wider and faster progress in living standards and greater economic security for middle and working class Americans.

The right reforms would also strengthen the rate and resilience of economic growth by broadening its base and deepening its foundations. But in this season of voter discontent, they will need first and foremost to impress as astructural, as opposed to merely symbolic or ad hoc, response to the growing economic anxiety of Americans about the rapid and often disruptive pace of technological change and global economic integration.

This is the major unfinished business of the clean-up from the financial crisis.