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Most jobs in America are created by private businesses, large and small. The legal and
cultural climate in the United States—which permits an individual to develop an idea and
seize an economic opportunity by launching a new business, often aided by infusions of
capital from risk-taking investors—is unparalleled in the world today, and is the foundation
upon which American prosperity is built.
America’s economic course, however, has also had its negative side. Most notable is the
widening gap between those in the minority with the skills and training to take advantage
of the new economic environment, and the rest of society. While rising inequality was
initially put forward as a concern by liberals, conservatives too have recently begun to
comment on the phenomenon. Even former Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan has
recently said that the growing differentials in income and wealth constitute potential
threats to the future of capitalism.
In the United States, organized labor has traditionally worked to defend the rights of
workers and soften capitalism’s sharp edges. The steep decline in union membership over
the past few decades is therefore unsettling. In 2006, only 12 percent of American
workers were represented by unions, a remarkably low figure for a developed industrial
democracy. An even more telling statistic is the unionization figure for the private sector:
7.4 percent (36.2 percent of public employees are unionized).
Unions in practically every liberal democracy have suffered losses in recent decades, due to
the evolution of their economies away from industrial production and toward the provision
of services. Yet in most of these countries, unions continue to represent a quarter or more
of the private workforce and play a vital role, in partnership with management and
government, in ensuring that the benefits of a productive economy are widely shared. In
Canada, for instance, workers in the private sector are four times more likely to be
unionized than their U.S. counterparts. The decline of unions is not in itself evidence that
the rights of employees are being trampled or that workers are unhappy in their jobs. If
workers choose to reject unions, that is their right in a democratic society. In the United
States, however, the playing field has tilted against organized labor over the past three
decades. Management resistance to unionization has increased, and both federal policies
and the decisions of the National Labor Relations Board have narrowed the ability of
unions to secure bargaining rights for workers.
Antidiscrimination Laws

Since the adoption of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, the United States has established an
elaborate framework of laws and policies that are designed to prevent discrimination
against women and racial and ethnic minorities. These laws have played an important role
in transforming the status of groups that had previously played subordinate roles in the
nation’s economic life and had often been excluded from institutions of higher education.
Women in particular have gained from policies meant to accelerate their participation in
the economy. While they are still grossly underrepresented in the halls of Congress,
executive mansions, and corporate boardrooms across the country, women today are more
likely than men to attend college, and their presence in medicine, law, and other
professions has increased exponentially over the past several decades. We are confident
that this will continue, as glass ceilings are broken by the pressures of meritocracy,
targeted legal action, and the continuing evolution of cultural sensibilities on the part of
men and women alike.

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