The true difference between Obama, Romney

STORY HIGHLIGHTS David Frum: American workers have been losing ground for decades He says President Obama's answer is to make up for wage declines with government aid Romney's view is that government can't prop up wages but should enable innovators, Frum said Frum: The candidates won't fully own up to their visions, but you can read between the lines Editor's note: David Frum is a contributing editor at Newsweek and The Daily Beast and a CNN contributor. He is the author of seven books, including a new novel, "Patriots." Washington (CNN) -- If you listen carefully, you can hear something important being debated in this election, in fact one of the most important questions of them all: What hope is there for the average American worker? Once upon a time -- in the far-off days after World War II -- the average worker could look forward to a steadily rising standard of living. You didn't have to be anyone special or do anything special. Just keep doing your job, and over the three decades from the mid-1940s through the mid-1970s you could expect your wages to double. And that's after inflation. That was a long time ago. Even before the Great Recession, wages tended to stagnate or decline, except for the most skilled workers in the most robust industries: technology, finance, and so on. The middle stayed put; the top pulled away. There's little reason to expect that situation to change after recovery arrives. Opinion: Republicans risk being the party of mean We live in a world of global competition now, where even white-collar jobs can be outsourced to India. If the jobs can't be exported, then the workers are imported, via legal or illegal immigration. Outside the government sector, unions wield little clout -- where they exist at all. For those reasons and others, the wage share of the economy had already sunk to record lows as of 2007. What -- if anything -- should be done? Barack Obama and Mitt Romney each have answers, although you have to listen carefully to reconstruct them. Romney: Obama believes in redistribution Clinton: No one could fix mess in 4 years Should business put people before profits? New ads boost political war of words Here (as I read it) is President Obama's answer. (These are my words, except for the speech quote.) Purely free markets won't be generating wage increases any time soon. There's just too much low-wage competition out there. But we can do two things. As I outlined in my November 2011 speech in Osawatomie, Kansas, we can put more people to work in jobs funded by government contracts, where government can ensure high wages and benefits. That's what I meant when I said, "[M]anufacturers and other companies are setting up shop in the places with the best infrastructure to ship their products, move their workers, communicate with the rest of the world. And that's why the over 1 million construction workers who lost their jobs when the housing market collapsed, they shouldn't be sitting at home with nothing to do. They should be rebuilding our roads and our bridges, laying down faster railroads and broadband, modernizing our schools -- all the things other countries are already doing to attract good jobs and businesses to their shores.