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We Need a Fair Wage
Guarantee
For the one in five American workers
currently drawing unemployment
benefits, the end
of this month brings a grim reality: the expiration of Federal Pandemic Unemployment
Compensation, which has added $600 a week in benefits and forestalled
evictions, bankruptcies, and food insecurity for millions. In a new
issue brief, Roosevelt Fellow Bharat Ramamurti and Great Democracy
Initiative Fellow Lindsay Owens explain why an extension of this
supplement is necessary but insufficient for insulating Americans from
steep income drops. The solution, they argue, is a fair wage
guarantee. Four benefits: It raises wages for millions, provides a
powerful economic stimulus, promotes the hiring of unemployed workers,
and addresses racial inequities in the labor market. Learn more in
“The
Fair Wage Guarantee: A Once-in-a-Generation Opportunity to Raise Wages
and Accelerate Our Economic Recovery,” and read more from Ramamurti and Roosevelt
Fellow Naomi Zewde in Vox’s “The
End of the American Dream.”
-
The costs of the
cliff: In a letter sent on Wednesday, leading progressive
organizations—including the Roosevelt Institute, the Center for
American Progress, MoveOn, and the Economic Policy Institute—urged
Congress to extend the unemployment supplement:
“This $600 boost to unemployment benefits has helped millions pay
rent, buy groceries, and keep the lights on. Slashing workers’ incomes
now, by any amount, before it is safe to go back to work—and while
there are still more than 3 times as many unemployed workers as job
openings—will further hurt demand.”
Bolstering State Economies
by Raising Progressive Taxes
With state and local governments
facing unprecedented revenue shortfalls, many are proposing deep cuts
to public services and employment even as COVID-19 reaches new peaks.
As Kitty Richards (strategic advisor to the Groundwork Collaborative)
explains in a new issue brief, there’s a better way: “Tax increases,
especially those that fall on the rich, are far less damaging than
spending cuts. In fact, not only should spending not be cut to avoid a
tax increase, further increasing [state and local] taxes on the rich
in order to increase spending would provide a large boost to the local
economy.” Learn
how.
- The inequality of budget cuts: “Budget
shortfalls will exacerbate gender and racial inequities already
worsened by COVID and they will levy a heavy and long-lasting toll on
women workers,” Roosevelt Director of Health Equity Andrea Flynn and
Georgetown Center on Poverty & Inequality Co-Executive Director
Indivar Dutta-Gupta write
for Ms. Magazine. “Women and people of
color, and particularly women of color, will be more likely to lose
their jobs and the cuts to essential health, education, and other
services will jeopardize their health and economic security in the
short and long term . . . There is no getting around it: A
gender-equitable recovery requires an infusion of funding from the
federal government to the states.”
 Rhiana Gunn-Wright, in Her
Words
“In some ways, it’s easier to talk
about climate change than when we first came out with the Green New
Deal resolution. That’s because the connections between the pandemic
and climate crisis are clear, starting with the fact that people of
color—Black and Latino folks—are dying at far higher rates from
COVID,” Roosevelt Director of Climate Policy Rhiana Gunn-Wright tells
Emma Goldberg for the New
York Times newsletter In Her
Words. This
week, Gunn-Wright joined former Vice President Al Gore and others for
Bloomberg Green’s virtual event, “The
Time Is Now,” and
reiterated why climate action requires racial justice: “To move
something with no support on one side, you need multiracial
coalitions,” Gunn-Wright said. “And that is difficult to do unless you
are speaking about climate in a way that creates a more just and
equitable society.” Watch
here.
 Rest in Power,
John Lewis
Roosevelt mourns the passing of
Rep. John Lewis—Conscience of the Congress and model of undaunted
leadership. “While his words and his voice and his presence are a
vivid memory, it is his example of humanity and leadership in our
democracy that will be his legacy,” said Roosevelt board chair Anna Eleanor
Roosevelt, who presented Rep. Lewis with a Four
Freedoms Award in
1999. “We are all committed to keeping that legacy alive.”
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