From the Publisher

Ohio: A Single Courageous State

In 2005, two Harvard professors conducted a study in which 5,000 Americans were shown a pie chart of the distribution of government money in two hypothetical countries, which were actually the U.S. and Sweden.

Participants were asked to imagine that if they joined this nation, they would be assigned a place in the distribution so they could end up being very rich or very poor.

The result in the professors’ words: “Unsurprisingly, 92% of the Americans chose to become citizens of the unnamed Sweden.”

The bad news is that since then, the gap between the rich and the poor has widened; today, the rich are richer and the poor are even more poor.

At first glance, the solution to this serious problem would include two options: move to Sweden or move Sweden to Ohio. But, there is another option. And it could change Ohio forever.

In a famous Supreme Court opinion during the Great Depression, Justice Louis Brandeis wrote that Washington can treat smaller governments and jurisdictions as policy proving grounds because “a single courageous state may serve as a laboratory and try novel and economic experiments without risk to the rest of the country.”

I would like to propose that we accept the challenge to be that “single courageous state” and bring the economic and social practices of Sweden to Ohio.

To be more like Sweden means to care as much about people as we do about money. The year 1980 is the last year America achieved an economic balance between management and labor. Ironically, the Swedes will tell you that to provide the human services they do, they had to become better capitalists.

With Ohio’s world-class assets in business, education, health, arts and the announcement of Intel’s $20 billion investment in the state, there could be no better time to make this the year Ohio achieves what our federal government has not been able to achieve.

The time is right to be Justice Brandeis’ “Single Courageous State.”

Executive Publisher Lute Harmon Sr. Executive Editor Terry Troy Managing Editor Jennifer Bowen Sima Senior Editor Rachel Hagenbaugh

Managing Art Director Rayanne Medford Art Directors Tom Abate Stacy Mallardi-Stajcar

Contributing Writers Karen Learner Beis Joanne Cahill Rhonda Crowder Christina Easter Alex Emerson Linda Feagler Lee Fisher Theresa Neuhoff Pat Perry Bob Sandrick Jill Sell Lynne Thompson

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