The vast majority of new jobs during tough economic times are created by entrepreneurs, and since 1980, all net job growth has come from businesses less than five years old. Entrepreneurs nationwide know firsthand the transformative effect that starting a business can have on individuals and on their communities.

Across the...]]> Thu, 05 Feb 2009 00:00:00 -0600 But that is not really the true value of growth. Over the long term, we can't count on growth to make bad loans good or risky investments safe. People will always need to live within their means, and investors should always be prudent.

However, over the long term, growth is the solution to what ails the US economy today, and the solution to many of the challenges we face down the road. Growth - and only growth - can produce the wealth that will enable us to further reduce poverty, create greater access to health care, and begin to tackle looming problems such as climate change and entitlements.

The stakes are high. The US economy grew at nearly 4 percent per year in the...]]> Fri, 09 May 2008 00:00:00 -0500 Stagflation produced nightmarish dramas in households as jobs disappeared and savings eroded. It produced panic in the political world as doubts grew about the future efficacy of American capitalism; by the 1980s, it appeared to many as if Japan would overtake us. Among economists, stagflation prompted a growing realization that the postwar Neoclassical Synthesis--the marriage of Keynesian demand-side theories with mathematical formalism--suffered from basic flaws, or at least didn't hold for all times and circumstances.

To some economists, the road to recovery seemed to demand that the understanding of capitalism itself had to change. The great debate over the nature of modern...]]>