Matthew J. Slaughter and David Wessel:
One road leads to historic opportunity. Taking this route requires continuing to discover and harness innovations like artificial intelligence and clean tech to boost productivity and to yield widely shared prosperity and, thus, to restore confidence in the American dream. The other road is potholed by further widening of the chasm between economic winners and losers and narrowed by walls that the U.S. is building to block the global flows of products, capital, people and ideas that the nation promoted for decades after World War II.
Americans increasingly voice anxiety and skepticism about the forces of innovation, globalization and competition. Too many have not experienced, or do not expect their children to experience, the growth in income, wealth and opportunity they consider adequate—relative to their memories of earlier decades, and relative to those at the top of the income distribution, and relative to their aspirations.
Three questions confront American capitalism at this crossroads, the resolution of which will shape the lives of future generations. Will America deliver economic opportunity to more of its people—or will the gap between the extraordinarily successful and struggling widen? Will America continue building walls to the world—or will it build new bridges? And will America strike the right balance between competition’s creative destruction and the government’s regulatory guard rails—or will it tilt too far in one direction or the other?