|
Panel Detail:
Tuesday, April 25, 2006
9:25 AM - 10:40 AM
America, Open or Closed? Economics and the Global Society
Speakers:
Edwin Feulner,
President, The Heritage Foundation; Co-Author, Getting America Right: The True Conservative Values Our Nation Needs Today
Louis Uchitelle,
Economics Writer, New York Times; Author, The Disposable American: Layoffs and Their Consequences
Lorna Wallace,
Research Fellow, Milken Institute
Doug Wilson,
Chairman, Townhall.com; Co-Author, Getting America Right: The True Conservative Values Our Nation Needs Today
Moderator:
Joel Kurtzman, Senior Fellow, Milken Institute; Senior Advisor, Knowledge Universe
 |
|
Louis Uchitelle, left, argues that economic success is a social issue. In his remarks, Ed Feulner, right, said the government should focus on its three biggest challenges: Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security.
|
|
All the panelists in this session agreed on the answer to the fundamental question posed in the title of the discussion: Yes, the U.S. economy is open. Some, however, placed qualifications on their responses. Lorna Wallace of the Milken Institute suggested that the economy is under threat of closure, and that without government involvement, the benefits of a favorable economic environment will not automatically accrue to society. To describe the level of government involvement she believes is necessary for success, Wallace quoted from Lewis Carroll's Through the Looking Glass: "It takes all the running you can do just to stay in the same place."
According to Doug Wilson of Townhall.com, the most important factor to the success of the U.S. economy is the preservation of the U.S. "social character." This social character, which Wilson said gives America its competitive advantage over the rest of the world, is based on the idea of individual responsibility and on an individual’s power to take risks, be entrepreneurial and innovate. However, Ed Feulner of The Heritage Foundation and Louis Uchitelle of The New York Times agreed that current government and corporation policies toward the economy do not, in fact, encourage this sort of individual initiative.
Uchitelle focused his remarks on the often ignored social costs of layoffs, asserting that the "experience of being laid off is quite severe" and can thus have implications for American economic success and competitiveness through its effect on individual workers. From Uchitelle's perspective, economic success is a social issue and thus needs to be discussed and debated as such. Feulner took a different view, however, suggesting that rather than focusing the debate on social issues, the government must deal with the serious challenges posed by "the big three: Medicare, Medicaid and social security."
Toward the end of the discussion, moderator Joel Kurtzman of the Milken Institute asked the panelists what they believe are the most important policy proposals to ensure U.S. economic success. Wallace named fiscal responsibility and infrastructure investment. Wilson asserted his faith in the importance of the empowerment of the individual and suggested increasing the number of visas available to foreign Ph.D. holders in order to reverse the "brain drain" of educated individuals out of the United States. Uchitelle reiterated the importance of recognizing the true costs of layoffs and proposed requiring corporations to file annual impact statements detailing their firm’s labor force activity. Feulner said the U.S. government should seriously expand free trade, get entitlement programs under control and avoid tax increases that he believes will slow economic growth.
All the panelists did agree, however, on the need for greater public and governmental debate on solutions to problems of American economic success and competitiveness.
| 
