Comments

  1. This is an excellent post. I’m particularly glad to know that a financial writer in a major publication is writing about these issues.

    If it were done in a more organized way, corporate welfare could be called industrial policy. But I think “industrial policy,” in the minds of “very serious people” (from Paul Krugman’s blog), is associated too much with socialism and communism. It’s too bad that we can’t see these things as tools in an economic toolkit rather than gateway “drugs” to be feared.

    In Judaism we have a story (a midrash): After God created man and woman, God asked them whether they would be willing to be his partners in finishing creation. Man and woman said yes. After a little while, the angels asked, “God, is the world finished now?” God answered, “I don’t know. Go ask my partners.” My understanding of the social mortgage is that it is part of our partnership with God (when I’m in a theistic, deistic mood) in carrying on the work of creation.

    • William Bole says

      Love the midrash. Thank you, Marilyn! I think that’s fundamentally what a social mortgage is about, in theological perspective. Less optimistic about an industrial policy in the seeable future.

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