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Analysts expect this fall's election to turn on the economy. President of the American Enterprise Institute Arthur C. Brooks wants to deepen the debate on the economy by discussing which economic policies are morally right. Brooks talks to Steve Inskeep about his book, The Road to Freedom: How to Win the Fight for Free Enterprise.

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STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:

Economic issues are shaping this year's presidential campaign, as we're hearing in this morning's news. Arthur C. Brooks, of the American Enterprise Institute, says that debate involves more than money. It's a question of which economic policies are morally right.

ARTHUR C. BROOKS: This is one of the greatest weaknesses of people on the political right and free enterprise advocates in America today; is this inability or unwillingness to make moral arguments. People who are not especially sympathetic to the free enterprise system have very successfully been making moral arguments. The leitmotif of the 2012 campaign, it turns out, is going to be fairness, and that's a moral argument.

INSKEEP: Brooks tries to counter that with a moral argument for free enterprise. His new book, "The Road to Freedom," contends that people are happier with less government, which leads to another big question of 2012 - how much less government?

Help me define, as you see it, the responsibility of government - because as people who read this book will know, you're not an advocate of no government. You see a place, it seems, for a social safety net and so forth. So what are the limits?

BROOKS: The government should be doing two things, basically. The first is providing a minimum basic safety net for the truly indigent. That means enough food, enough housing, enough medical care. Today, the safety net we have in this country reaches all the way up into the middle class.

People who retire, middle-class people who retire, take three times as much out of the Social Security system they ever paid in. That's completely unsustainable, and it's not fair. And that's a really important thing to keep in mind.

We also have a social safety net that's trying to take the risks out of life, that's trying to achieve greater income equality. That's the wrong basis for a social safety net. Social safety net should be relieving the worst suffering.

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'Road To Freedom': Moral Debate For Free Enterprise