America has always been a country that thrives on hard work, thrift and self-reliance. We have all absorbed Benjamin Franklin's maxim: “Early to bed and early to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise.”
This helped create jobs. In an application of Schumpeter's notion of creative destruction, the US lost 44m jobs in the last two decades of the 20th century, but simultaneously created 73m private sector jobs. A stunning 55 per cent of the total workforce was in new jobs by the turn of the century, two-thirds of them in industries that paid more than the average wage. This is no fluke. It is because we benefit from a unique brand of entrepreneurial bottom-up capitalism.
Today there is no evidence of job creation. Quite the opposite: unemployment is rising and millions of jobs have disappeared. In place of thrift we have become a nation of debtors, staggering beneath mortgages that exceed the value of our homes, and credit lines that exceed our ability to repay. But the “Great Recession” has also changed the nature of unemployment, making it harder for those out of work to find a job. Only by investing in infrastructure and innovation can we mend the system.