The Price of Civilization_ Reawakening American Virtue and Prosperity - Jeffrey D. Sachs [113]
As a society, let’s resolve to live up to the spirit of high accomplishment, fair play, and equality of opportunity that has defined America in its best days. America will not again dominate the world economy or geopolitics as it did in the immediate aftermath of World War II. That was a special historical moment; we can be glad that economic progress throughout the world is rapidly creating a more balanced global economy and society. Yet we need not hide from the heightened global competition either. If we again invest in ourselves—for good health, safe environment, knowledge, and cutting-edge skills—renewed American prosperity can still be secured. A strong and prosperous America will not only compete in the global marketplace but also cooperate more effectively in global politics. Our future lies in a healthy, productive balance of competition and cooperation in an interconnected society.
Every American can play a role. No class war is needed or intended. Yet as America’s greatest businessmen, from Andrew Carnegie to Bill Gates, Warren Buffett, and George Soros, have known, those with great business skills have great responsibilities as well. Not only is there no excuse for hiding money in tax havens or lobbying to cut taxes that are urgently needed, there is a high civic responsibility to support public collective actions necessary and to augment those public actions with private philanthropy and leadership. The tens of billions of dollars given by Gates, Buffett, and Soros for global health, poverty reduction, good governance, and political freedom are proof of what can be accomplished by farsighted individuals who turn their unique business acumen to global problem solving as well as policy.
We are, in the end, stewards of the future at a time when our shared future is imperiled by economic divisions, shortsightedness, and a growing ecological crisis. We have great tasks ahead, to redeem once again the American trust in democracy and equality. We have a high responsibility to our children and other generations that will come. Let us begin anew.
For my parents
Theodore and Joan Sachs
paragons of justice, compassion, and happiness
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
A work of political economy is necessarily a work of individual responsibility: only the author is responsible for the interpretations of a nation’s political and economic life. At the same time, such a work is inevitably the result of countless discussions and debates with colleagues, friends, and family. The Price of Civilization in that sense is also a group product, the result of a social process over several years of trying to make sense of America’s ongoing political and economic crises.
As always, my family was the first resort for sharing my half-baked ideas and having the worst ones removed quickly from the kitchen. And indeed it was the kitchen where Sonia, Lisa, Adam, Hannah, Matt, Andrea, and I most frequently congregated to try to make sense of the daily economic news and to try to piece it together into a larger canvas. With gratitude to all for allowing me to clog up the kitchen table for years with streams of opinion survey results, national accounts data, presidential budgets, and mountains of books, book, books.
Aniket Shah, my special assistant at the Earth Institute, was the constant, skilled, and relentless navigator at my side, helping me to organize, analyze,