Looking backward, looking forward
“The American economy is both riding a record-breaking expansion and adrift in a decade of lost progress. Which truth applies depends on your zip code.
A large and rapidly growing share of the population lives in thriving areas. The post-recession economy has delivered phenomenal economic growth and rising prosperity for degree holders, professional workers, and communities with spending power. But an economy that only works for the college-educated and the places they congregate is not an economy that works.
The ruddy national economic outlook risks breeding complacency. It should not. The median American community has not healed from the trauma of the Great Recession and is ill-equipped to cope with the inevitable next downturn. This period of national prosperity is our chance to reinvest in communities and rekindle the economy’s dynamic forces. Policymakers should strive to make opportunity more accessible, healthy risk-taking more viable, markets more competitive, and people more empowered to choose and shape their communities.”