In last night’s State of the Union address, President Obama declared that the United States “we will not go back to an economy weakened by outsourcing, bad debt, and phony financial profits.” He railed against a system that isn’t fair to the “millions of Americans who work hard and play by the rules every day,” positioning himself against special treatment for a favored few: “No bailouts, no handouts, and no copouts,” he said. The address, he explained, was intended to move past all that, and “lay out a blueprint” for America’s economy—a blueprint that “begins with American manufacturing.”
