|
Austerity Is Not the
Answer
The need for structural policy change
has never been clearer. Nearly
40 percent of
low-income American households have now experienced
job loss during a
crisis that’s disproportionately
harmed our
nation’s most vulnerable. And as Federal Reserve Chair Jerome H.
Powell explained this week, our recovery will be slow
without swift government action on the scale this crisis requires:
“Additional fiscal support could be costly, but worth
it if it helps avoid long-term economic damage and leaves us with a
stronger recovery.” The bill
introduced by House Democrats this week—the Health and Economic
Recovery Omnibus Emergency Solutions (HEROES) Act—is a step in the
right direction, with $1 trillion in aid to state and local
governments and another wave of $1,200 cash payments, among other
essentials. But as Roosevelt President & CEO Felicia Wong writes
for the blog, the bill does not do enough to mitigate long-lasting
macroeconomic consequences, prevent corporate extraction, or rebalance
power. Read
why.
- The dangers of austerity:
This coming Monday, a webinar hosted by the Roosevelt
Institute, Groundwork Collaborative, and partner organizations will
trace the history of American austerity and explain the urgent need
for increased federal spending—with featured panelists Nobel Laureate
Paul Krugman, historian Kim Phillips-Fein, and Community Change
President Dorian Warren. RSVP
now.
- Green stimulus: Evergreen—a
group co-founded by Roosevelt Fellow Bracken Hendricks—and Data for
Progress have unveiled a $1.5 trillion coronavirus stimulus plan,
which pitches federal funding for state and local clean energy
programs and technology incentives. Learn
more.
- Rewrite the rules: “Helping
businesses to keep paying their workers, as Rep.
[Pramila] Jayapal’s Paycheck Guarantee Act does, is the
most efficient way to stop millions of Americans from being laid off,
protect access to health care at a time when it is especially needed,
and keep businesses of all sizes from permanently shuttering,”
says
Roosevelt Chief Economist Joseph Stiglitz. For
Barron’s, Roosevelt Fellow Lenore Palladino suggests Seattle
councilmember Kshama Sawant’s “Amazon
tax” proposal as a nationwide
model.
 The Right to
Employment
A federal job guarantee has deep roots
in the presidency of FDR, whose Economic Bill of Rights included a
right to employment. Now, the idea may be the ticket for a V-shaped
recovery. Radical
Imagination host Angela
Glover Blackwell and Roosevelt Fellow—and member of presumptive
Democratic nominee Joe Biden’s
economic
unity task force—Darrick Hamilton explain in a
New York
Times op-ed: “An updated
version of Roosevelt’s vision would increase bargaining power and
expand the social safety net for all workers. By hiring workers at the
beginning of a downturn, a permanent job guarantee would operate as an
automatic stabilizer in perpetuity, maintaining consumer spending and
protecting us from recessions—making our economy more resilient as
well as more inclusive.” Read
more.
- Hidden rules of
race: “Black [people] are generally the last hired, and they
will bear the brunt of this unless we do something transformative,”
Hamilton told
the Washington Post this week. As
he explained
to PBS NewsHour, “this pandemic
has demonstrated that we have a great deal of public power where we
can intervene to limit economic insecurity and vulnerability.”
 Antitrust + Labor Policy = Worker
Power
Much of employers’ power exceeds the
reach of antitrust policy. Rebalancing the scales for workers,
therefore, requires an antitrust-plus agenda, including labor policies
that raise the minimum wage and promote unionization. In
a
new Roosevelt Institute report, Roosevelt Fellow Suresh Naidu and the
University of Chicago’s Eric A. Posner catalogue and evaluate the
effectiveness of various proposals; and for the blog, Roosevelt
Editorial Manager Matt Hughes explains how COVID-19 has reframed the
conversation.
|
