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An Economic Growth
Obsession
Public health and economic health shouldn’t
be mutually exclusive. But as economic experts argue in a new
Bloomberg piece, society’s fixation on GDP growth has skewed policy
priorities to our collective detriment. “In the midst of a deadly
pandemic, we still heard the false dichotomy positing a trade-off
between our public health and our presumed economic viability,” says
Roosevelt Fellow Darrick
Hamilton.
“Focusing on the wrong things can lead to taking the
wrong actions,” Roosevelt Chief Economist Joseph Stiglitz explains.
“There are better gauges of how well we are doing, including assessing
how the fruits of our progress are shared and the extent to which our
gains are sustainable.” Read
on.
A Federal, Online Higher
Education System
“If ever there was a moment, it is
now for the federal government to play a role in creating a more
centralized set of online courses,” Roosevelt’s Suzanne Kahn tells
MarketWatch. As she envisions it, a federal online education
system—with a free database of general education courses that fulfill
credit requirements at colleges—could lower the cost of a degree. “If
the federal government is making this available as a public good,
there are still probably people who will go to colleges that cost
money, but by setting a floor that is quality free public higher
education, you’re both making that available and also helping to
regulate the market,” says Kahn.
Read
more.
Catch
Up
-
On the seventh episode of
Made to
Fail—a podcast co-produced
by Roosevelt, The Hub Project, and Goat Rodeo—Mehrsa Baradaran, Lenore
Palladino, and Bharat Ramamurti explain the legislative and
administrative flaws that prevented some small businesses from
accessing Paycheck Protection Program funds. Listen
here.
- In a Roosevelt webinar, Stacey
Abrams—SEAP
Co-Founder and Executive Director—and Open
Society-U.S. Executive Director Tom Perriello
discussed how leaders across the South are innovating and building
toward an equitable economic recovery. Watch
now.
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