You may have noticed that President Obama recently started talking about middle-out economics—the idea that a thriving economy doesn’t start with the ultra-rich or with big corporations, but instead with ensuring financial security for regular Americans.
But Obama didn’t coin the phrase middle-out economics. That honor goes to Seattle thinkers Eric Liu and Nick Hanauer who present compelling evidence that the real job creators in the American economy are ordinary working families. It makes sense; when wealth concentrates only at the very top, ordinary folks have less to spend, and businesses have fewer customers. When we’re all doing better, our economy gets stronger.
Liu and Hanauer argue for broad prosperity for America’s middle: “middle-out economics,” they write, “demands a systemic policy focus on the skills, capacities, and income of the middle class.” That means investing in people and our communities: in education, infrastructure, energy, and innovation, and putting in place policies that provide health security, retirement security, and ladders of opportunity for everybody.
To get all of that rolling, Liu and Hanauer insist that “it is time to kill the myth of trickle-down economics—and to replace it with the true story of middle-out economics.”
Here’s how to get started.
