I am refreshed to learn there are some individuals in the democratic party with some common sense.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/...omic-fight-happening-in-the-democratic-party/
....The centrist Democratic think tank Third Way offers the company's (Kodak) decline as a telling example of what's ailing America's stagnant middle class — and as a counter to the emerging liberal consensus that the rules of the economy have been "rigged" against workers in recent decades.
The struggle of the middle class is "not because the economy is unfair or because the deck was stacked," says Jim Kessler, Third Way's senior vice president for policy. "It's because the economy has fundamentally changed."
The difference there is crucial, for policy and for messaging. One side believes what's gone wrong for the middle class is that wealthy and powerful players have rewritten the tax code, trade deals, labor law and other policies in order to advantage themselves, at the expense of workers. Middle-class stagnation, in this view, is a choice that can be corrected by shifting power back to workers, at the bargaining table and elsewhere.
The other side, the Third Way side, believes that the stagnation is a natural consequence of a globalizing economy, which has disproportionately benefited people with high skills and people who own stock, businesses and other forms of capital. That's the story Kodak is meant to represent. Its demise wasn't imposed by someone else's policy choice, it was a failure of the company to adapt. To boost the middle-class, by that logic, workers need to be given the means to adapt.
This is a live and sometimes acrimonious debate in the Democratic Party. It is a debate between populists, such as Sens. Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders, and what you might call party traditionalists such as Bill Daley, one of President Obama's former chiefs of staff.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/...omic-fight-happening-in-the-democratic-party/
....The centrist Democratic think tank Third Way offers the company's (Kodak) decline as a telling example of what's ailing America's stagnant middle class — and as a counter to the emerging liberal consensus that the rules of the economy have been "rigged" against workers in recent decades.
The struggle of the middle class is "not because the economy is unfair or because the deck was stacked," says Jim Kessler, Third Way's senior vice president for policy. "It's because the economy has fundamentally changed."
The difference there is crucial, for policy and for messaging. One side believes what's gone wrong for the middle class is that wealthy and powerful players have rewritten the tax code, trade deals, labor law and other policies in order to advantage themselves, at the expense of workers. Middle-class stagnation, in this view, is a choice that can be corrected by shifting power back to workers, at the bargaining table and elsewhere.
The other side, the Third Way side, believes that the stagnation is a natural consequence of a globalizing economy, which has disproportionately benefited people with high skills and people who own stock, businesses and other forms of capital. That's the story Kodak is meant to represent. Its demise wasn't imposed by someone else's policy choice, it was a failure of the company to adapt. To boost the middle-class, by that logic, workers need to be given the means to adapt.
This is a live and sometimes acrimonious debate in the Democratic Party. It is a debate between populists, such as Sens. Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders, and what you might call party traditionalists such as Bill Daley, one of President Obama's former chiefs of staff.
