• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

CHAPTER 10.

Prosperity Regained

The aim of this chapter and the next is to chart a path from here to 2020, one that restores hope, direction, and decency to American society. We are on the wrong track, Americans shout in unison. Then let us steer back to the right track and show clearly how we can restore prosperity and purpose. The starting point should be clearer goals for society and pragmatic ways to achieve them.

Setting Goals

In Table 10.1, I suggest a set of economic goals and timelines. The first goal addresses the current jobs crisis. Today’s 9 percent unemployment rate should be 5 percent by mid-decade and sustained at that lower level until 2020. There will be many policies to help get us there, involving labor market reforms, greater leisure time, and a long-term boost to worker skills. We’ll look at those alternatives in a moment.

The second goal, which is closely related, is to address the education crisis. By 2020, at least 50 percent of those aged twenty-five to twenty-nine should hold a bachelor’s degree or higher, up from 31 percent in 2009.1 That is the sine qua non for competing successfully in the twenty-first-century global economy. To get there, today’s students will have to perform better in the key subjects of math, science, and reading. Here, too, we should set goals, based on global benchmarks. America needs to end its long slide in school performance. It should certainly be able to score within the top ten countries in those three subjects by the year 2015 and the top five by the year 2020.

Table 10.1: Goals and Targets, 2011–2020

Goal 1. Raise Employment and the Quality of Work Life

Reduce unemployment to 5 percent by 2015.

Improve governance of CEO compensation.

Guarantee paid maternity and paternity leave in all firms of a hundred employees or above.

Goal 2. Improve the Quality of and Access to Education

Raise the share of twenty-five- to twenty-nine-year-olds with a bachelor’s degree to 50 percent by 2020.

Raise the U.S. ranking in global test scores to within the top five in all categories: reading, science, and mathematics.

Goal 3. Reduce Poverty

Cut the national poverty rate to 7 percent by 2020, half of the 2010 rate.

Reduce the share of America’s children growing up in poverty to below 10 percent by 2020.

Goal 4. Avoid Environmental Catastrophe

Reduce America’s greenhouse gas emissions from 2005 to 2020 by at least 17 percent.

Ensure that low-carbon energy supplies account for at least 30 percent of U.S. power generation by 2020 and 40 percent by 2030.

Have 5 million electric vehicles on the road by 2020.

Goal 5. Balance the Federal Budget

Reduce the budget deficit to below 2 percent of GDP by 2015.

Eliminate the budget deficit by 2020.

Stabilize government health care outlays at 10 percent of GDP.

Goal 6. Improve Governance

Provide public financing for all federal elections.

Limit corporate financing of campaigns and lobbyists.

End the revolving door.

Consider constitutional amendments on term length and limits.

Goal 7. National Security

End the military occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan.

Rebalance the outlays on defense, diplomacy, and development.

Create by 2012 a national security strategy in line with the National Intelligence Council’s Global Trends 2025.

Goal 8. Raise America’s Happiness and Life Satisfaction

Establish national metrics for life satisfaction.

Raise life expectancy to at least eighty years.

Move from twenty-second to top five in least corrupt countries (Transparency International Corruption Perceptions Index).

Third, we need an honest approach to poverty, not one that blames the poor and leaves them to their fate. We know that the single most important key to ending the cycle of poverty is to enable today’s children growing up in poverty to reach their full human potential. That in turn requires that America as a society invest in the human capital—meaning the health, nutrition, cognitive skill, and education—of every child