Economic Dignity

National Product counts air pollution and cigarette advertising, and ambulances to clear our highways of carnage. It counts special locks for our doors and the jails for the people who break them. It counts the destruction of the redwood and the loss of our natural wonder in chaotic sprawl. It counts napalm and counts nuclear warheads and armored cars for the police to fight the riots in our cities.



He went on to note what it does not measure:



The gross national product does not allow for the health of our children, the quality of their education or the joy of their play. It does not include the beauty of our poetry or the strength of our marriages, the intelligence of our public debate or the integrity of our public officials. . . . [I]t measures everything in short, except that which makes life worthwhile.



This is not to dismiss the importance of economic growth. A growing economy with rising productivity is critical to how a nation can produce more goods and critical services with fewer labor hours and raise standards of living generation by generation. A growing economy can make more room for more people to move up or move in without others having to take a smaller slice of the economic pie. And there is increasing evidence of how promotion of aspects of economic dignity complement, not detract from, growth. Reducing vast inequality puts more money in the pockets of families who will spend on their basic economic security, leading to higher economic demand. Policies that ensure that all Americans have first and second chances to pursue their potential means not only more people finding purpose and meaning in their economic lives, but more success in ensuring we are producing at our national potential.



Yet economic growth by itself should never be considered an appropriate ultimate end goal for economic policy. Its ultimate value lies in the degree it serves as a means to lift up what is most universally treasured and precious in people's lives. In a nati

Americans in recent decades. Professor Sir Angus Deaton, Nobel Laureate in Economics 2015
 
Sperling s call to make economic dignity our North Star provides a powerful moral frame for guiding economic policy that can be unifying for all progressives even when we don't agree on every solution. Sperling rightly stresses that we need bold steps to ensure what he calls an economic dignity wage and economy that provides true first and second chances, and that government must play a far bigger and smarter role in ensuring the innovation, worker power, and skills we need to make economic change work for the many and not just the few. Sperling is one of the most important economic thinkers of our time. Ro Khanna, member of Congress 
 
Never have I come across a book that is so intellectually engaging, deeply compassionate, and solutions oriented at the same time. Economic Dignity is all of those things on a topic as encompassing and defining as the economy. Ai-jen Poo, Director, National Domestic Workers Alliance
 
Economic Dignity points us beyond our fixation on GDP to the ends economic policy should serve promoting the dignity of work and the well-being of families and communities. Gene Sperling reconnects economics to moral and civic purpose and offers a framework for a much-needed debate about how to help those left behind by the winner-take-all economy of recent times. A healthy economy not only delivers the goods, he reminds us; it also provides the basis for mutual respect among citizens.   Michael J. Sandel, author of What Money Can t Buy: The Moral Limits of Markets

Gene Sperling gets it. He understands that the Dignity of Work isn't just a political slogan -- it's an ethos; it's who we are as progressives, and it's how we must govern. Defining and fighting for that dignity is at the heart of today's economic debates, and that makes Gene Sperling essential reading. Senator Sherrod Brown

Sperling shows that the question of modern politics is not growth or equity, but growth and equity. Not only that, he shows that with a focus on economic dignity, town can be united with city; rural with urban; young with old; and North with South, as these values transcend both place and identity. It is for that reasonthat this book will end up as required reading this year on both sides of the Atlantic.   David Muir, The New Statesman