Labor AND Capital

In a very interesting article in the October 21 New York Review of Books, Benjamin Friedman, Economics Professor at Harvard, discusses the differences between the economic programs of Messrs Kerry and Bush. Here are three excerpts.

“Labor as an input to the economic production process has little place in Mr. Bush’s vision of an “ownership society”, and people whose place in the economy is simply to work for a living are clearly not those whom his policies seek to encourage and reward. Is this the new future – a world in which, as in Star Trek, the problem of satisfying society’s material wants has been solved and human input (or at least input by Americans) is mostly unnecessary? Or is it a betrayal of the long tradition of respect for everyday work that Max Weber identified with Calvinism, and that in America has been a popular moral theme from Cotton Mather to Horatio Alger to Franklin Roosevelt to Ronald Reagan?”

“Attitudes toward work are one way to judge how a society regards itself. Athens and Rome were slave societies. Citizens ideally did no work, but rather devoted themselves to participation in civic affairs. The Judeo-Christian tradition more typically regarded work as a necessity compelled by divine order, reflecting an essential burden borne by humanity….”

“the fundamental economic issue of this election involves the respective roles of work and saving – labor and capital – in the economy we seek to create. Do we value and encourage one, or the other, or both?”

This election is not only about Iraq. It is about us and the future we want for this country. We need labor. We need capital. We need a united nation.