Ro Khanna represents Silicon Valley in the US House of Representatives. He is the deputy whip of the Congressional Progressive Caucus and was formerly the co-chair of Bernie Sanders’ 2020 presidential campaign. What follows is an excerpt from Chapter 5 of Khanna’s new book ‘Dignity in a Digital Age’, where he outlines a vision for distributing the gains of the digital economy across the US. Khanna is also featured in the openDemocracy documentary series ‘US Progressives on a Knife Edge’.
The grand promise of the digital age is the possibility of aligning the aims of political justice with economic growth.
Our nation has created unprecedented wealth in recent decades, and now can invest in the development of “substantive freedoms” for every American to foster even greater prosperity over the long term. Amartya Sen coined this phrase, substantive freedom, to mean our capability to lead a life we “have reason to value”.
