The Policy Bedrock of a
True New Deal
Accepting the Democratic nomination
for president 88 years ago, FDR pitched a transformative plan for a
nation in crisis: a New Deal to shift not just policy but power.
Today, Americans want and need change on a similar scale. “From the
Movement for Black Lives to the Green New Deal coalition, movements
are asking for the same basic things: a government that spends its
money and political capital not on punishment, incarceration, and the
status quo, but on education, jobs, care, and transformation,”
Roosevelt President & CEO Felicia Wong writes for Boston Review. Read on for five
policies Wong says
we need now.
For more coverage of Roosevelt’s
True
New Deal report,
read this
Vox piece, which
features interviews with Wong and Duke University’s
William
“Sandy” Darity Jr.
And for more from Wong, read her latest blog post: “Toward
the Light: How Joe Biden’s Convention Speech Compares to FDR’s New
Deal Address.”
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We can afford it:
“Interest rates have been low for decades, and with pressing political
issues to address, the main focus should be on how to spend. The
prospect of raising taxes on the rich, however, should remain,”
Roosevelt Director of Progressive Thought Mike Konczal writes
for The Nation. “Taxes don’t just raise
revenues; they also structure the income distribution. And raising
taxes on the rich would help stop the economy from simply channeling
income to executives and owners.”
Shareholder Primacy
Persists
One year ago, Business Roundtable
members pledged to move from a “shareholder value” model to a more
community-oriented approach. But as UMass Amherst’s Chirag Lala and
Roosevelt Fellow Lenore Palladino find, “CEOs continued to prioritize
paying shareholders and taking on debt in late 2019 and early 2020.”
Learn more about their research in a
new Roosevelt blog post.
An Automatic
Stabilizer
Congress’s continuing failure to
authorize new stimulus checks only strengthens the case for recurring
direct-cash payments, Economic Security Project co-founder and
Roosevelt senior advisor Chris Hughes argues in a Financial
Times op-ed: “Because every recession is different, there will
always be cliffhanger policy negotiations. But having direct cash on
autopilot at least makes room for discussions about other emergency
measures, and avoids leaving millions in the lurch.” Read
more.
Made to
Fail
This week, the Hub Project, the
Roosevelt Institute, and Goat Rodeo launched Made to Fail, a
new podcast that
examines the decades-spanning conservative efforts to undermine
foundational American institutions now strained further by
COVID-19—from health care to elections. CNN legal analyst and former
Obama administration official Elliot Williams hosts the eight-part
series. Subscribe
now.
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