The recession is pregnant with a new economy while it is burying the economy of the past. The nation and the world are going to expect much from the new economy, which will be very different from the old. The challenges to the new economy will go beyond the ubiquitous call for environmental sustainability. Equally, if not more importantly, the new economy must power up to provide more and better goods and services at prices that induce increases in effective demands. Only an economy with more powerful productive muscles than its predecessors can relieve the social tensions of unacceptable and great inequalities in wealth, both within and between nations.

The electronic miracles of widespread communications make it dangerously impossible for the inequalities to remain. The strengths of economies are vitiated when only the political tools of income redistribution are used to attempt forcing more equitable distribution of wealth and income. What is needed instead of sole relianc