The Pro-Growth Progressive: An Economic Strategy for Shared Prosperity [Hardcover]

Gene Sperling (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 1, 2005

After two consecutive elections in which Democratic candidates failed to turn clear economic advantages into electoral victory, a debate is raging over what the Democrats should donow. The narrow, red state-blue state argument between chest-beating populists and soulless centrists offers the answer to neither the country's economic future nor the political future of the Democrats. In The Pro-Growth Progressive, President Clinton's longest-serving national economic advisor, Gene Sperling, argues that the best economic strategy for our nation -- and the best strategy for progressives whether they be Democrat, Republican, or Independent -- is to pursue policies that are both progressive and pro-growth, that promote progressive values of upward mobility, fair starts, and economic dignity as well as embrace markets and innovation.

Sperling describes how both parties offer the American public impoverished choices: Democrats in the-sky-is-falling party too often pretend that the way to promote progressive values and expand the American middle class is to slow the pace of the global economy, stop all outsourcing, and intervene in the market. Republicans of the don't-worry-be-happy party hold fast to the bankrupt vision that the best thing for economic growth is the smallest government possible, and have made the conservative deficit hawks of the 1990s an endangered species. But The Pro-Growth Progressive is neither an all-out assault on the Bush agenda nor a partisan call for Democrats to move further left. Both conservatives and progressives have to accept hard truths about the limitations of their approaches. Drawing on his years of policy experience, Sperling lays out a third way on the issues that are dominating the news and Bush's second term: social security, ownership, globalization, and deficit reduction. He explains the policy alternatives that respect the power of free markets while giving government a role in ensuring that the markets benefit all working families. Focused and timely, The Pro-Growth Progressive offers a realistic vision of free enterprise and economic growth in which government can improve education, reduce poverty, and restore the country to fiscal sanity.

Editorial Reviews

From Booklist

The American economy continues to show steady growth despite massive federal deficits and skyrocketing energy costs. Compared to the economies of Japan and most western European nations, the American economy's capacity for job creation seems particularly dynamic. Yet concerns about the direction of our economy persist, as the deficit balloons and the gap between rich and poor widens. Sperling, the national economic advisor to President Clinton and currently the director of the Center on Universal Education at the Council on Foreign Relations, deals with these concerns in a low-key, generally sensible treatise that avoids the inflammatory language frequently characterizing today's debates on economic policy. Dogmatists from the Right and Left will dismiss many of Sperling's suggestions, but flexible Republicans and Democrats may find much common ground here. He recognizes both the inevitability and the value of globalization but realizes the short-term havoc it can create in particular industries. He offers interesting observations on issues as varied as paid family leave, Social Security reform, and universal preschool education. Jay Freeman
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Review

"In the 1990s, Gene Sperling played a pivotal role in America's progressive economic revival, which led to record job growth, higher middle-class wages, and millions of Americans being lifted out of poverty. With this book, he offers a far-reaching but commonsense vision of how to do it again, in a more complex time. For anyone committed to long-term prosperity that benefits all Americans, this book is a must read."

-- President Bill Clinton

"Gene Sperling, one of the chief architects of Clintonomics, does it again. With humanity, optimism, and realism, his important book, The Pro-Growth Progressive, tells us how to channel the forces of economic change to our advantage."

-- George A. Akerlof, Nobel Laureate in Economics 2001

"Globalization confronts us with a baffling array of domestic, economic, and political issues, alongside some rapidly emerging geo-political and geo-economic forces. Gene Sperling's balanced and sophisticated analysis, and an unusually wide array of possible prescriptions, is indeed an impressive piece of work."

-- Peter G. Peterson, former Secretary of Commerce and author of Running On Empty

"Even if you have never completed an economics course, this hugely readable book charts a comprehensible and balanced course between doctrinaire policies of both right and left. No misty theoretician, Sperling espouses specific and practical responses to economic and societal problems that too many have thought insoluble."

-- Arthur Levitt, former Chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 368 pages
• Publisher: Simon & Schuster (November 1, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0743237536
• ISBN-13: 978-0743237536
• Product Dimensions: 9.4 x 6.7 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,131,077 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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25 of 27 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A vision for Democratic Party domestic policy, January 2, 2006

By 

Andrew J. Givens (Diamond Bar, CA USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Pro-Growth Progressive: An Economic Strategy for Shared Prosperity (Hardcover)

The Pro-Growth Progressive is an outline that promotes the agenda of the liberal movement (now self re-named as Progressive). This outline contains both strategy (to link policy ideas to American values of work, self reliance, fairness, equality of opportunites, etc.) and substance.

Both strategy and substance are well organized and mostly balanced. I tend to overlook the occasional rhetoric and one-sidedness, since it was probably inserted to help maintain the interest of the extreme left. In short: this outline is mostly a re-statement of the Clinton adm. domestic policy goals, with some expanded, some re-worked, and with some interesting new ideas presented here.

The main policies suggested here are:

1. Universal 401(k)with $2-to-$1 matching tax credits on the 1st $2,000 invested (and portability, since ALL americans will be offered this program).
2. Universal Pre-school.
3. Universal after-school.
4. Job re-training programs, and education assistance programs.
5. Maintain Social Security in it's present form (fix it by adding a new 3% tax on all income above $200,000).
6. Reject any/all attempts at protectionist trade policy.
7. Maintain and improve the current progressive tax system.
8. Reverse the Bush Tax cuts (at least on the top 2% and on the reduction of estate taxes).
9. Modest increase in Fed. min. wage (to $7.00 - $7.25 in 2006).
10. Expand/increase the Earned Income Tax Credit.
11. Balance the budget (except in times of recession or other national urgency situation).

While most moderates can agree with most of these policies, at least in principle, the author has presented few estimates of actual costs to taxpayers. This summary of costs should have been included in a final chapter - such final chapter was notably absent. The estimated costs are a necessary component of any serious policy discussion and should have been summarized in table form.

Left to my own rough estimates, it seems that the Progressive agenda presented here would cost:
- reverse the Bush tax cuts
AND
- increase taxes BY TWO TIMES the Bush-tax-cut-reversal-amount to balance the budget, to fully fund SS, Medicare, the Universal 401K, etc.

While the policy objectives presented in this outline are noble and honorable, much elaboration is still needed on each item that would further examine the cost of the income transfers and the benefits to America as a whole.

I did enjoy the author's style and his aggressive and fair debate. (BTW, I am a moderate Republican...) His relentless pursuit of a balanced budget is absolutely correct, and the proposal of Universal 401k is also a policy whose time is right. Finally, his analysis that free trade is good for all Americans proves that he is a Democrat that "gets it". It fact, the author thinks like an economist - understands there are ALWAYS trade-offs and secondary effects, and thereby measures his policy goals by their likely overall consequenses to the US economy. (Hence the "pro-growth" objectives.) The major question left TBD is whether the policy results themselves can provide more contribution to a "virtual cycle" or will the costs of poorly re-distributed capital create an excessive drag on the economy (thus hurting those that such policies are designed to help)?


Republicans better get their act together - strategists like Gene Sperling have an agenda that if follwed by Dem candidates - will probably change the political landscape for a very long time. If Democratic candidates were to follow these guidelines, there could be a new majority in congress in 2006 and the WH in 2008.

8 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Ignores Health, No Budget--Reflections Not Solutions, April 30, 2006

By 

Robert D. Steele (Oakton, VA United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Pro-Growth Progressive: An Economic Strategy for Shared Prosperity (Hardcover)

Anthony Gibbens' review is superb, and I endorse it and amplify on it. THis book loses one star to two flaws: it begs too many key issues (such as health care, and corporate accountability), and it has no budget and no section on tax reform and increasing government revenue by eliminating fraud, waste, loopholes, and bribery-induced subsidies. That is always my litmus test for serious books about economic policy. One can use the National Budget Simulation, for example, and actually test all these ideas. I, for example, have taken the trouble to identify $550 billion a year in readily available increases in federal tax revenue, and another $300 billion a year in defense and intelligence spending that could be redirected toward soft power and open source intelligence/revitalization of education and national research. It's not real until it's in the budget. This book is platitudinous, worthy of consideration, but not legislatively enactable.

There is no question but that Gene Sperling performed ably for President Clinton EXCEPT that he sacrified the American worker by opening the door for broad indiscriminate lay-offs (see my review of The Disposable American: Layoffs and Their Consequences by Louis Uchitelle) and he evidently did not see the economic urgency of completely recasting our national educational system (including exile of the stake-holders in the old system to Chinese re-education camps near Mongolia).

On balance, Sperling is now one of those "has experience, listen to him" guys, but he is part of the last gasp of the old guard in the Democratic party, and for my money, a combination of Return of Rubin and Elevation of Matthew Miller would do more good. See my reviews of the books by both these stars.

The author lacks real familiarity with emergent technologies, especially bio-technologies that are CRTICIAL to reducing poverty and illiteracy (see my review of Tofflers Revolutionary Wealth: How it will be created and how it will change our lives), and over-all the book does not represent a comprehensive strategy that reflects an understanding of system dynamics, both internal to the Republic and globally.

Bottom line: worth reading, 30% of this will be useful, somewhat tired. Rubin is more mature, Miller more innovative. Sperling needs to be in the car, but not driving.