Keeping competitive

From the Brookings Global Economy and Development Program comes a paper on rebuilding American competitiveness, proposing that "policymakers need to build a foundation for sustainable, long-term prosperity that can drive our economy once we move beyond the present crisis."

The paper's four-part agenda for America's future call for investing in:

• Infrastructure: prioritizing transportation infrastructure, reducing traffic, upgrading freight efficiency, expanding access to broadband, selling the wireless spectrum


• People: building an affordable, flexible health care system, encouraging lifelong learning, providing economic security


• Ideas: providing incentives for innovation, patenting only the best, investing in blue-sky R&D, promoting innovation clusters


• Green transformation: putting a price on emitting greenhouse gases, investing in green R&D, promoting green government decisions

Strengthening American Competitiveness: Regaining Our Competitive Edge - Four Priorities and 20 New Ideas (pdf, 28pp/352kB), Feb. 2009