The Consumer Price Index continues to show price increases in basic items such as groceries. (Spencer Platt/Getty Images)
From groceries to housing, basic necessities are becoming increasingly unaffordable for all Americans. As Roosevelt’s experts have explored, there’s a common culprit: corporate concentration, enabled by a lack of antitrust enforcement, resulting in stagnant wages and a lack of worker power.
Confronting the cost-of-living crisis will require multiple interventions to reshape warped markets, as the Roosevelt Institute summarizes in a new fact sheet:
Tweaks around the edges will never come close to addressing the affordability crisis. Now is the time for bold, creative ideas for reshaping our economy to serve the public good.
In case you missed it: Nwanevu also joined Roosevelt’s Lena Bilik for a book club discussion on these topics.
On taxing the rich: On Marketplace, Senior Fellow Beverly Moran explained the constitutional hurdles to implementing a national wealth tax: A clause originally intended to insulate slaveholders now insulates billionaires.
On the Federal Reserve: The Fed’s annual Jackson Hole symposium kicked off yesterday, with climate-driven risks notably missing from the agenda. This is a grave mistake, according to Senior Fellow Sarah Bloom Raskin, who noted to Wyoming Public Radio that “extreme heat alone is costing the US economy approximately $100 billion per year in labor productivity impacts.”
