An Economic Strategy

I’ve just read a great Business Week article called Why America Needs an Economic Strategy. It’s by Michael Porter, who leads the Institute for Strategy and Competitiveness at Harvard, and you would think that with a title like that, Porter believes we don’t have one. You’d be right.

The stark truth is that the U.S. has no long-term economic strategy—no coherent set of policies to ensure competitiveness over the long haul…. America’s political system, especially as it has evolved in recent times, almost guarantees an absence of strategic thinking at the federal level. Government leaders react to current events piecemeal, rather than developing a strategy that unfolds over years….. Both parties contribute to the problem by approaching the economy with long-held ideologies and policy positions, many of which no longer fit with today’s reality.

The article was published in the October 30, 2008 issue of Business Week and would have been written some number of weeks before that, well before the election. Porter hopes that the next President and Congress rise to the challenge. Read the article and judge for yourself.