The focus of our public discourse has been on how American companies are competing with Japanese, German, and other foreign companies. What this allows us to ignore is how each of those American companies is really in competition with the families of the workers. That's the real competition.

Private fortunes, in the present state of our circulation, are at the mercy of those self-created money lenders, and are prostrated by the floods of nominal money with which their avarice deluges us.

I am in favor of high wages and agree that the higher the wages, the stronger the evidence of prosperity, provided (and that is the important point) they are so naturally, by the effectiveness of industry, and not in consequence of an inflated currency or any artificial regulation.

President Bush announced his new economic plan. The centerpiece was a proposed repeal of the dividend tax on stocks, a boon that could be worth millions of dollars to average Americans. Well, average stock-owning Americans. Technically, Americans who own a significant amount of shares in dividend-dealing companies. Well, rich people, that's what I'm trying to say. They're going to do really well with this.

So Europe needs to be competitive and we also need to be competitive if we wish to remain an interesting economic partner for the United States. This has to be done on the basis of strength, of competitiveness.

With neoliberalism discredited and austerity failed, we need to rewrite the rules of the economy once again. But this time in the right way. We need rules that focus on long-term economic growth, and the only kind of sustainable prosperity is shared prosperity.