Andy Stern Describes Free Market and Says it "Should Never Be Revived"

Andy Stern, A Member of Obama’s Fiscal Responsibility Commission, Says ‘Worshipping the Market’ Has Failed America
Tuesday, June 08, 2010
By Penny Starr, Senior Staff Writer


Andy Stern, former head of Services Employees International Union (SEIU) and a President Barack Obama appointee to the National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform, said on Monday that the free market has failed the country and American workers. He made his remarks at a conference of the Campaign for America's Future in Washington, D.C., on Monday. (CNSNews.com/Penny Starr)
(CNSNews.com) – Andy Stern, the former head of the Service Employees International Union who now sits on President Obama's National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform, said the United States needs an economic plan that does not include “worshipping” the free market.

“America needs a 21st century economic plan because we now know the market-worshipping, privatizing, de-regulating, dehumanizing American financial plan has failed and should never be revived, worshipping the market again,” Stern said in remarks at the annual conference of the liberal activist group Campaign for America’s Future in Washington on Monday.

“It has failed America and everyone that works here,” Stern said.

Stern said the changes that Obama and Democrats in Congress have made are nothing short of a “revolution” that will move the American economy from national to international.

"This not our father’s or our grandfather’s economy," Stern said. "We’re as far today from the New Deal as the New Deal was from the Civil War. And we cannot drive into the future looking in the rear view mirror."

He said the progressive movement must build on the past and look to the future as the economy is transformed "from a manufacturing base, to a service, finance, knowledge, green, Internet, and bio-science economy."

“This revolution’s going to only take 30 years,” Stern said. “No single generation of people have ever witnessed this much change in a single lifetime.

“American people sense the change,” Stern said. “They know something is different.

“And they, like us, I think, are in search of a new pathway forward,” Stern said. “And as we’ve witnessed now in the absence of a simple and realistic way forward, people – even us – sometimes resist the future or try to turn back the clock to days that are now long gone."