The United States' lead in aerospace is being lost by offset
deals that send jobs and technology know-how overseas.

Any long-term expansion must produce enough quality jobs to improve the lives of working families. Unless we do it right, the U.S. economy could slip into an extended period of slow growth and few new jobs.

Barry Bluestone, professor of Political Economy at Northeastern University in Boston, MA, warns we need to assure long-term economic growth, long-term prosperity and ensure that growth is more evenly distributed.

What's the secret to long term growth?" asks Bluestone. It's the public sector and the private sector working together to create new technologies and new industries. The tremendous investment in aircraft technology not only gave us the best fighters and bombers, but the 707, the 727, McDonald Douglas and Lockheed. There were enormous investments in education and in public infrastructure from interstate highways to airports. Even the internet was first developed by the Defense Department."

Bluestone contends that government spending on science and infrastructure take decades to convert into everyday products that consumers and businesses use. Heavy government investment in the 1960s and 1970s propelled productivity and economic growth in the 1990s.

The private sector converts basic research to applied development. Local, state and federal governments invest in education and training. That creates a labor force to effectively use new technology," said Bluestone.

Today, conservative economists claim the U.S. economy prospered because weaker trade unions kept wages low, expanding imports kept prices low, and tight money kept inflation in check. As corporate profits increased, the stock market boomed and the economy grew. For them, future growth requires more of the same medicine.

And yet, our greatest economic growth and prosperity came with high rates of unionization and higher rates of government spending on infrastructure, basic research, and education, according to Bluestone.

We've forgotten that lesson," said Bluestone. It wasn't weak trade unions, it wasn't free trade. It wasn't Alan Greenspan. It was a technology-led revolution based on public sector dollars that allowed the private sector to give us a boom.

Spending that we invested in education, training, new technologies, and new industry was as high as 14 percent in 1968," said Bluestone. It's projected to be down to just about five percent of Gross Domestic Product by 2004. We are destroying the engine of economic growth."

For Bluestone, putting the nation on a sound footing means a different set of priorities. We need public investment in basic research and infrastructure. We need a higher minimum wage because it helps consumption. We need labor law reform to foster unionization and build economic security in the workplace. We need fair trade not free trade. And we need to restore social equity with universal health coverage and expanded public services in transportation, daycare and eldercare to build a society of growth with equity," he said.