By Bruce Katz – At the most basic level, the U.S. needs more jobs— 12.1 million by one estimate—to recover the jobs lost during the downturn and keep pace with population growth and labor market dynamics. Beyond pure job growth, the U.S. needs better jobs, to grow wages and incomes.
The next President must look beyond Washington and enlist states and metropolitan areas as active co-partners in the restructuring of the national economy.
Remaking the economy, in essence, requires a remaking of federalism so that governments at all levels “collaborate to compete” and work closely with each other and the private and civic sectors to burnish American competitiveness in the new global economic order.
The time for remaking federalism could not be more propitious. With Washington mired in partisan gridlock, the states and metropolitan areas are once again playing their traditional roles as “laboratories of democracy” and centers of economic and policy innovation. more> http://is.gd/ZMUa8b
