Labor & Employment Law

Democracy Roundtable: Right Changes Now Would Build Strong Future

By James Parks

What will the economy be like in 2021? That?s the question five progressive experts venture to answer as part of an online roundtable in the latest issue of Democracy: The Journal of Ideas. Twice a year, the magazine poses a question to experts about what they foresee for the country in 2021 and posts the discussion on its website and in the publication.  

The winter 2010 theme is focused on jobs and the economy in 2021. AFL-CIO Deputy Chief of Staff Thea Lee, one of the panel experts on this subject, said if we are prosperous and economically strong in 2021, it?s because in 2010 we recognized that we were on a path that was leading to greater erosion of the middle class.

The path that we were on was also undermining our ability to innovate and reap the fruits of innovation. I totally agree with the need for massive and targeted public investments in all the areas that we?ve talked about: clean energy, infrastructure, skills and education.

Lee also said we would have changed our trade policy to encourage our own country to develop and implement new technology and respect core worker rights. We would have created incentives for our developing country partners to have good labor practices as well, so that countries like China, for example, become more democratic and develop their own middle class.

Globalization was a big topic with Robert Atkinson, founder and president of the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation (ITIF), who wrote:

I think globalization is a wonderful thing. I think global integration has all these great benefits. What I object to is non-market-based globalization, which many countries practice?subsidization by governments to distort prices is a bad thing. Yet that is what countries are systemically doing.

Lee added:

Globalization isn?t the right word. It?s not “Yes” or “No” on globalization?that?s not the choice we have. The question is: Do we have the right set of rules in place? And we would certainly argue that the particular rules of the global economy over the last couple of decades have facilitated a massive shift of global bargaining power. Not just from labor to capital but from governments to multinational capital.

Other participants include Heather Boushey, senior economist at the Center for American Progress (CAP); Harry Holzer, professor of public policy at Georgetown University; and Sherle Schwenninger, director of the New America Foundation?s Economic Growth and American Strategy programs. 

Check out the whole discussion here.

Full post as published by AFL-CIO NOW BLOG on December 17, 2010 (boomark / email).