Obama Series

 

Change We Can Believe In by Barack Obama, 2008, Excerpts

 

Our economy is at its strongest when we reward work, not just wealth, and when all Americans can prosper from growth.

 

Barack Obama believes that to steer us out of this downturn and to put America on course to lead in the global economy, we have to hold firm to one core principle that our economy must grow to advance opportunity for all Americans.

 

Help workers share the benefits of economic growth by raising the minimum wage and giving workers a free choice about joining labor unions.

 

He believes that we must create bottom-up growth that empowers hardworking families to climb the ladder of success and raise their children with security, opportunity, and hope for a better future. These hops are at the heart of the American Dream. Yet, despite the resilience, optimism, and hard work of the American people, their dreams too often have been frustrated over the last eight years by economic policies that protect special interests and the privileged few and ignore the working families that are America’s backbone and the engine of our economic growth.

 

In the last eight years, the Administration has abandoned the principle of broad-based growth that has been the historic foundation of our success.

 

Barack Obama also has a plan to expand opportunity and ensure growth over the long run through smart investments in America and Americans.

 

With our economy struggling, Barack Obama’s plan makes the investments we need to grow our economy so that every American has a chance to succeed.

 

It’s tem of new policies that invest in the growth of our economy and create the jobs and opportunities of the future. As President, Barack Obama will pursue a competitiveness agenda built upon education and energy, innovation and infrastructure, trade and reform that will create jobs and prosperity for all Americans.

 

More than 80 percent of the fastest-growing occupations are dependent upon a knowledge base in science and math, and some economists estimate that about one half of U.S. economic growth since World War II has been the result of technological innovation. Barack Obama believes that to create widespread prosperity, America cannot lose its technological edge.

 

Spur Regional Economic Growth

 

As President, Barack Obama will support innovation clusters – regional centers of innovation and next-generation industries – across the country. He will provide grants both for planning these clusters and cultivating their growth.

 

America boasts the highest-skilled manufacturing workforce and advance manufacturing facilities in the world, both of which have powered economic growth in America for decades.

 

Along with an increased federal investment in the research, development, and deployment of advanced technologies, this $1 billion per year investment will help spur sustainable economic growth in communities across the country.

 

He believes that thousands of companies want to grow their businesses here at home and that we ought to make it easy and as encouraging as possible for them to do that.

 

Yes, we have to make that the economic pie is sliced more fairly, but we also have to make sure that he economic pie is growing.

 

 

The Audacity of Hope by Barack Obama, 2006, Excerpts

 

I’m confident we have the talent and the resources to create a better future, a future in which the economy grows and prosperity is shared.

 

In broad outline, government has taken three forms. First, government has been called upon throughout our history to build the infrastructure, train the workforce, and otherwise lay the foundations necessary for economic growth. All the Founding Fathers recognized the connection between private property and liberty, but it was Alexander Hamilton who also recognized the vast potential of a national economy – one based not on America’s agrarian past but on commercial and industrial future. To realize this potential, Hamilton argued, America needed a strong and active national government, and as America’s first Treasury secretary he set about putting his ideas t work. He nationalized the Revolutionary War debt, which not only stitched together the economies of the individual states but helped spur a national system of credit and fluid capital markets.

 

Economists have noted that throughout the world – including China and India – it seems to take more economic growth each year to produce the same number of jobs, a consequence of ever-increasing automation and higher productivity. Some analysts question whether a U.S. economy more dominated by services can expect to see the same productivity growth, and hence, rising living standards, as we’ve seen in the past.

 

In many places economies are growing. We need to build on these glimmers of hope and help those committed leaders and citizens throughout Africa build the better future they, like we, so desperately desire.