The Roosevelt Rundown is an email series featuring the Roosevelt
Institute’s top 5 stories of the week.
1. The
Racial Wealth Gap and Student Debt
Due to structural racism, the $1.6
trillion student debt crisis is especially
harmful for Black
students and families, who pay more, owe more, and see worse outcomes
when it comes to higher education. In Bridging
Progressive Policy Debates: How Student Debt and the Racial Wealth Gap
Reinforce Each Other (produced in partnership with Demos and The Century
Foundation), Roosevelt Institute Program Manager Suzanne Kahn and her
co-authors bring together research on both higher education and the
racial wealth gap, tracing the historic policy decisions that have
shaped structural inequities. “To fairly evaluate any
higher education reform proposal, we must understand the ways that
these dual burdens—less wealth and more debt—lead to worse outcomes
for Black students than white students.” Every 2020 candidate should pay attention to
why
this matters.
2. Shareholder Capitalism
To curb runaway shareholder power,
the candidates can look to the UK for inspiration. For
the Washington Post, Roosevelt Senior
Economist and Policy Counsel Lenore Palladino and Roosevelt Fellow
Todd Tucker explore the Labour Party’s hopes to dismantle
shareholder
primacy by extending ownership of
companies to employees. “Creating inclusive
ownership structures would try to build a very
different understanding of how businesses operate and what they owe
their employees and other stakeholders,” they write. “The US economy
... performed better when shareholders faced legal and cultural
constraints from hoarding all the wealth,” said Tucker in
a Twitter
thread.
3.
Power and
Corruption
“The crises our country
faces—the daily threat of gun violence; the precarity caused by
sky-high drug prices, health care costs, insufficient savings, and low
wages; and the existential peril of climate change—are all connected
by a single thread: power.” To gauge how serious the
candidates are about structural change, Roosevelt
Fellow Julie Margetta Morgan wants to know if the
candidates are serious about shifting the power dynamics in our
economy and our democracy. Tonight, “moderators should press
candidates on how their policy platforms would dismantle—or
reinforce—concentrated power in the economy” and “ask candidates how
their views on power
shape the way that they choose to run their
presidential campaigns.”
4. Gender Inequality
“Our
economic system is really bad for women, especially women of
color,” Roosevelt
Fellow Andrea Flynn writes for the blog. As conservative-dominated
courts across the country curb labor and reproductive rights, all
Americans need to hear how the candidates plan to defend womens’
health, safety, and economic security. “A progressive
agenda that proudly centers women is not only the right thing to do,
but it’s also good policy and smart politics. Women—and specifically women of color—are
the backbone of the Democratic party, and their votes will be needed
to send a Democrat to the White House in 2020.”
5. Housing
Affordability
A problem that’s gotten little (if
any) of the spotlight this campaign season: high
housing costs. For
the blog, Roosevelt Fellow Katy Milani diagnoses the trends that got
us here and suggests how we can reimagine the role of government in
the housing market. “First, any plan must rein in—or better yet
prohibit—predatory Wall Street investors (specifically [private
equity]) from buying homes and hiking up rental costs. Second,
we need to think boldly about how the federal
government can and should directly provide housing—especially since housing is a fundamental
necessity for human thriving, and the private sector is failing to
provide safe, affordable housing to all.”
What We’re
Reading
In a piece on Sen. Bernie Sanders’s
Workplace
Democracy Plan,
which would end “at will” employment and strengthen the right to
strike, New York
Times columnist Jamelle
Bouie describes how
mass strikes and picketing have spurred federal
action throughout
history. “Workers' rights to strike and picket are their most powerful
weapon; they counterbalance employers' property rights,” Roosevelt
Fellow Brishen Rogers tweeted in response to the column. “If we want decent work, and economic
equality, we need to protect the right to strike once again.” There’s
no better place to make that case than tonight’s debate
stage.
|