JEFF JACOBY (“Entrepreneurs don’t deserve the professor’s ire,’’ Op-ed, Sept. 28) sees ire toward business and undue exalting of the public sector in Elizabeth Warren’s remarks on the social contract. I hear passion, fairness, and profound belief in indispensability of the public goods only government can and must produce.
During the last two decades, I have interacted with hundreds of socially responsible business leaders from large and small companies. The vast majority would have no objection to Warren’s core message: Companies need the stability, services, and infrastructure that government provides every day; government needs a healthy private sector as the primary engine of job and wealth creation; and a social contract needs partnership and mutual respect from both, along with an informed and active citizenry to serve as the ultimate arbiter of whether each side is upholding its end of the bargain.
Warren’s tone may be provocative to some. But her injection of the centuries-old concept of the social contract to reframe the current debates over the relationship between government and business brings much-needed civility to the vitriolic language that is contaminating current political discourse.
Allen L. White
Boston
The writer is a senior fellow at the Tellus Institute.
