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omy.
Technology allows companies to increase productivity while reducing their workforce, and outsourcing enables profits to grow by sending American jobs abroad. As we know from current headlines, the Bush Administration is cheering the practice on, although they are not supposed to say so in public.
We have lost more manufacturing jobs in the last three years than in the previous 20 years. Outsourcing has already devastated manufacturing and is now costing jobs in the service sector as well.
The trends that are evident in today's economy demonstrate that a larger role for government is needed if we are to insure that our children enjoy the same widespread economic opportunity which my generation did. When the incomes of the wealthy, the middle class, and the poor are rising together, then the decisions of those who control capital are more likely to benefit the entire workforce. In other words, their self-interest and the public interest are more likely to coincide. As a result, less government involvement is needed to insure that prosperity is broadly shared. However, in a time when most of the income gains are going to the richest 1% of the population, it is clear that the gains of the wealthy few are coming at the expense of everyone else. In such an environment, it becomes particularly important for government to provide a counter-balance to private economic power, and to insure that all segments of society benefit from the prosperity.
Only an active government genuinely committed to the welfare of American workers can ameliorate these highly negative trends. The growth in income inequality we have seen in the last 20 years will be dwarfed by the income gulf we will see in the next 20 years, unless we take necessary actions now. Future generations will be left to ask what became of the once great American middle class.
Progressives cannot continue to play defense in the battle of ideas. The stakes are too high. Nor can we allow ourselves to be cast as mere defenders of the status quo. We must make the debate between our vision of the future versus theirs. In reality, it is the Republican Right which is wedded to the ideas of the distant past, 19th century ideas which America rejected in the early years of the last century. We should portray them for what they are, Neanderthal merchants of outmoded ideas recycled from long ago.
Our vision for the future will certainly include a continuing commitment to the enduring principles that vastly expanded economic opportunity and social justice throughout the 20th century. But, we must go beyond them. Some of the most serious threats to the well-being of families today did not exist in years past, and some of the old problems still go unsolved as well. We need an agenda that has the capability to meet and master the challenges of 21st century life, that reignites the American dream for all people, and not just some, and that convinces people we know the way ahead.
Now is a time to come together and develop a blueprint to make 21st century America a genuine "opportunity society," - one that provides all our families with economic mobility and security.
First, we must create new and meaningful jobs for all Americans. And we must do this by recognizing once again that government - an enlightened government - has an extraordinary responsibility to assist in this task. History has shown that direct public investment in our human capital and our infrastructure can have a substantial role both in generating economic growth and in broadening economic opportunity.
We must find a way to guarantee health care for every American. The current system ignores the medical needs of 44 million of our fellow citizens, and is a major drag on our economy. Every other industrialized nation guarantees it, and so must we.
The greatest squandering of human capital in our nation is in the students who leave school - gradu
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