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The Lessons of
COVID-19
Uniquely ill-equipped for the
coronavirus pandemic after steep
funding cuts, the US is learning anew why public
investment and worker protections matter. “In the absence of paid sick
leave, many infected workers already struggling to make ends meet will
show up to work anyway. And in the absence of adequate health
insurance, they will be reluctant to seek tests and treatment, lest
they be hit with massive medical bills,” Roosevelt
Chief Economist Joseph Stiglitz writes for Project
Syndicate. As Omidyar Network Principal Joelle
Gamble explains
in The Nation, payroll
tax cuts and other quick-"fix" efforts are
inadequate for the task at hand. “If we treat the economic symptoms
only through short-term stimulus without fixing the structural
diseases in our economy, we’ll be just as susceptible in the future as
we are today.”
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EconCon 2020 is postponed: “The COVID-19 crisis is a health crisis that must be responded
to and managed as effectively as possible by governments,
organizations, and each of us as individuals—and we’re postponing this
conference to do our part in that. But it is also exposing many of the
deep flaws in our economy that we had been planning to work together
to tackle at EconCon 2020.” Read
more from EconCon’s organizers.
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On the Hill: Congress
is set to vote today on legislation that includes free virus testing,
14 days of paid sick leave, and federal funds for Medicaid, as
reported in the
New York Times. For reference, “one in four workers has no access [to paid sick
leave], according
to Labor
Department data. That includes 6 percent of the highest earners and
two-thirds of the lowest earners. Forty percent of workers in service
jobs, like those in restaurants, shops or child care centers, have no
paid sick time.” Read
more from the NYT’s Claire Cain Miller.
 The Greatest
Mobilization Since WWII
Just as the coronavirus requires
measured coordination at the national and international levels, so too
does the climate
crisis. As history shows, we have experience
acting en masse against existential challenges: “[T]he New Deal and
World War II mobilizations offer literal, instructive policy
precedents for the job before us,” Roosevelt Climate Policy Director
Rhiana Gunn-Wright, Roosevelt Fellow Bracken Hendricks, and Center for
American Progress Senior Fellow Sam Ricketts write for
Democracy. Read
on.
- More public spending is a
feature, not a bug: As Roosevelt Fellow J.W. Mason writes for
the same issue, a Green New Deal is essential to tackle the climate
crisis. “But just as important from an economic perspective, it will
pump needed dollars into our stagnant economy, boosting demand and
raising wages. Just as World War II mobilization pulled the United
States and other advanced countries out of the Depression, rapid
decarbonization could pull us out of today’s secular stagnation.” Read
more.
 Wells Fargo and the Perils of
Shareholder
Primacy
Before
the House Financial Services Committee, Wells
Fargo CEO Charles Scharf and (former)
board members testified about lax
corporate governance and consumer abuses; for the
blog, Roosevelt Director of Advocacy and Policy Katy
Milani analyzes
Wells Fargo’s recent 10-K filings and finds that
the bank’s stock buyback and dividend expenditures jumped from $12.5
billion in 2016 to $30.2 billion in 2019. Moreover, CEO pay at Wells
Fargo rose over 40 percent from 2016 to 2018, exceeding median worker
pay 300-fold.
Watch Rep. Jesús “Chuy” García (D-IL) cite
Milani’s research during Wednesday’s
hearing.
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Another angle: Though
Scharf is the third Wells Fargo CEO to testify about the scandals in
the last 3.5 years, the bank has largely skirted full legal
culpability. “. . . the DOJ basically caught a gang of thieves and let
them scoot right back to their den with most of the loot. Worse still,
criminal prosecutions—for a bank that openly admits it stole money
from its own customers—are off the table for now,” Maria Bustillos
writes for Slate. “Shareholders, all of them shielded from direct
liability, also benefited, as millions of Wells Fargo’s own
customers—and employees—were persistently fleeced and
abused.” Read
more.
 How
Women’s Access to Higher Education Changed
America
“Amidst the primary debate chatter,
you have probably heard
arguments that the student debt crisis is
undermining the higher education system’s ability to fuel economic
mobility. But this Women’s History Month, it’s worth noting that the
debt crisis is also undermining one of the most historically unique
elements of American higher education: [I]ts role as a force for
gender equity,” Suzanne Kahn—deputy director of the Great Democracy
Initiative and a Roosevelt Institute expert on education
initiatives—writes for TIME. “Early public investments in
higher education made higher education accessible to women. That
investment not only helped fill an intended social need by training
thousands of teachers, but also helped foster social change in
unanticipated ways.” Read
on.
 The Pillars of New
Progressivism
In a piece on Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s
presidential campaign exit, the New Yorker’s John Cassidy
examines the former candidate’s policies and impact using
the four
pillars of new progressivism coined by Roosevelt
President & CEO Felicia Wong: “To return to Wong’s terminology,
Warren isn’t just a new structuralist. In advocating for policies like
universal child care and the establishment of a post-office bank that
would offer basic banking services cheaply, she is also a public
provider,” Cassidy writes. “In proposing big public investments in
green energy and conservation, she is an economic transformer, too.
And in making one of her top priorities a comprehensive
anti-corruption plan, which she claims would ‘end lobbying as we know
it,’ she is an economic democratist.” Read
on.
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