America's Two Economies

[Valin]

WSJ:

 

With Barack Obama, the competition between the private economy and the public economy is clear.

DANIEL HENNINGER

7/25/12

 

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How the U.S. arrived at the need to choose between two competing economies reveals a lot about the political polarization in the country. Any history of the Democratic Party in the 20th century will recognize its roots in the American labor movement. The party was defined by the names of those unions. The United Mine Workers. The United Auto Workers. The Brotherhoods of Teamsters and Railroad Workers. Consider what those names represented: Both Democrats and Republicans were rooted in the private economy. Unionized workers knew then that this private economy was where they made their living. The arguments were over dividing the productive fruits of that economy. That was your father's Democratic Party.

 

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Today the private and public economies are in head-to-head competition for the nation's wealth—with the private economy calling that wealth capital or income, and the public economy calling it tax revenue and making moral claims for spending tax revenue.

 

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President Obama is right: This is a choice between two paths into the American future, the clearest choice since the end of World War II. It is a mandate election.

 

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